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Tag: Culled Culture

  • Alien: Romulus: Rain Lacks the Grit of Ripley

    Alien: Romulus: Rain Lacks the Grit of Ripley

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    Just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be another installment in the Alien franchise, “20th Century Studios” goes and releases Alien: Romulus. In fact, it was among the only “blockbusters” of Summer 2024 apart from Twisters and Deadpool & Wolverine (and no, Alien: Romulus still couldn’t even manage to topple the latter movie from its number one spot at the box office—such is the power of Marvel). So, in some sense, Earth was “clamoring” for a movie of this nature…being that Hollywood refuses to make anything new when it comes big-budget fare. Though they were at least “adventurous” enough to tap Fede Álvarez (known for another “quiet” movie: Don’t Breathe) as the director and Cailee Spaeny as the lead, Rain Carradine. The “Ellen Ripley replacement,” if you will.

    Unlike Sigourney Weaver stepping right into Ripley’s shoes after a bit part in Annie Hall and the lesser known Madman, Spaeny actually had a few films under her belt before taking on such a weighty role—having already done so with the back-to-back release of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla and Alex Garland’s Civil War. And yes, she’s been in a blockbuster before, even if it was one that landed with a thud: Pacific Rim Uprising. Later, she took a wrong turn with The Craft: Legacy in 2020 before correcting things with How It Ends the following year. In short, Spaeny has run the gamut of roles before Rain in Alien: Romulus. Which takes place two decades after the destruction the USCSS Nostromo that audiences witnessed in 1979’s Alien. The alpha and the omega of Alien movies. Which is, in part, why Álvarez is so committed to paying homage to it—in addition to remaking Ripley through Rain (another “R” name—and one that Ross Geller famously mocked when Rachel Green suggested it for their baby, replying to her with his imitation of a person with such a name: “Hi my name is Rain. I have my own kiln and my dress is made out of wheat”). Of course, everybody knows that no one can (or will) ever hold a candle to what Weaver did for the part of “leading lady” in Alien, and yet, they can try to present a new-fangled “badass” version of her. Only Rain doesn’t quite come across that way, instead exhibiting the sort of vulnerability and reluctance specific to the current generation. A generation that could never convincingly say, as Ripley does in Aliens, “I can handle myself.”

    Rain’s intrinsic fear of, well, everything is revealed from the outset, when her ex-boyfriend, Tyler (Archie Renaux), has to vehemently convince her to join him and the “crew” he’s assembled to enter an abandoned ship with cryostasis chambers that will allow them to defect from the godforsaken planet they’re stuck working on in favor of Yvaga—a planet where the sun actually shines (side note: the planet they’re on has plenty of dystopian Blade Runner flair). The crew consists of Tyler’s sister, Kay (Isabel Merced), his cousin, Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Bjorn’s adopted sister, Navarro (Aileen Wu). Of course, it isn’t that they really need Rain to come along, so much as her adopted brother, Andy (David Jonsson)—who just so happens to be an android old enough to know how to interface with an abandoned spacecraft that’s of “Andy’s generation.” Or close enough for him to understand it.

    Still, Tyler does a good job of sweet-talking her into getting some balls by reminding her that Weyland-Yutani is never going to let her leave no matter how much she works, having just fulfilled her contract only to be told that she’s being sent to the mines now (essentially a death warrant), informed she must remain on the planet to work for another “five to six years” before she can again be given the consideration to leave due to a shortage of workers. Thus, as usual, this installment of Alien continues to serve as an undercutting commentary about the callous exploitation of the working class by their oppressive employers. And while Rain might be “Gen Z enough” to lack the same amount of grit as Ripley in the face of adversity, she’s not Gen Z enough to demand a “flexible work schedule” and a “work-life balance” if she’s to be expected to continue working for Weyland-Yutani.

    After all, one of Alien: Romulus’ key goals appears to be to maintain as much of the status quo as it can from the previous films, including pronounced “homages” (even to the less beloved Alien Resurrection, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant). Obviously favoring Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens, what with everyone still thrusting so much undue hate upon David Fincher’s Alien 3—even though it yielded one of the most iconic images from the franchise: a xenomorph up close and personal with Ripley, who turns her face away from its dripping, drooling open maw. In fact, that’s the image Álvarez borrows from for his “nod” to Alien 3—even though, in this case, it doesn’t really work because Rain isn’t pregnant with an alien queen and, thus, there’s no way the alien would take its sweet time about appraising her instead of just snapping her up in its jaws.

    Elsewhere, some of the exact same lines from previous Alien movies are used as “callbacks” designed to provide “fan service,” though it often feels a bit too heavy-handed. Take, for example, Rook: the same (or a similar) model as Ash (Ian Holm, regenerated from beyond the grave) saying, “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.” Or Andy echoing Bishop’s (Lance Henriksen) aphorism, “I prefer the term artificial person myself.”

    Indeed, Andy gets far more venomous discrimination for being a “synthetic” than Bishop ever did—mainly from Bjorn, whose prejudice stems from an android not saving his mother from death in the mines, instructed to help twelve other miners instead by its supervisor, sacrificing the lives of two for the greater good of the dozen. It hardly makes Bjorn’s level of contempt justifiable, with the supervisor being the one to place his rage toward, if anyone.

    And, speaking of rage, the perfect opportunity for it to arise (though it never quite does) within Rain comes after another cheesy callback to Aliens, when Tyler teaches her how to use a prototype of the M41A Pulse Rifle the same way Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) taught Ripley to use an actual M41A Pulse Rifle. The latter reacts with far more titillation and gusto to learning than Rain, who still comes off as an overly cautious, scared little girl about the whole thing. In part, that “little girl” vibe compared to Ripley is likely because Spaeny is twenty-six to Weaver’s thirty-seven (when filming the indelible gun scenes for 1986’s Aliens). Granted, Weaver wasn’t much older than Spaeny in Alien, filming it when she was twenty-nine. Even so, she looks older in her twenties than Spaeny does in hers—in that way that all people who were in their twenties “back then” look older than people do now (chalk it up to “healthier lifestyles.” Though mental health has ostensibly been sacrificed as a trade for physical health…).

    What’s more, because of the generational divide between the first two Alien movies and the present Alien: Romulus, it’s inherent that Weaver, a product of the time when the films were made (no matter how far into the future it was intended to be), would come across as, let’s say, more tenacious and less fazed by the proverbial horrors—including the ones specific to a human-killing race of aliens. Her coolness under pressure intermingled with unflinching badassery that also exudes an impenetrable “don’t fuck with me” air is something that no Gen Zer (whether on the “geriatric” side of that age group or not) ever stood a chance at emulating, let alone recreating.

    Which is why, ultimately, the hardness of Ripley (even in name alone) can’t be usurped by Rain, a moniker that radiates the kind of hippie-dippy aura the aforementioned Ross Geller was talking about. Some might argue that this is a good thing, that it’s long been time for a heroine with “softness” and delicacy anyway. That women don’t always need to imitate the roughness of men in order for their strength to be taken seriously. Sure, that might be true—but it’s not true for an Alien movie.  

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” As Companion Pieces

    Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” As Companion Pieces

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    Just as Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed,” a bonus track from the Guts (Spilled) edition of her sophomore album, is focused on the “three’s a crowd” theme, so, too, is Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste.” But more than merely referring to the “three’s a crowd” trope in general, each song has its emphasis on when the male in a hetero relationship is still in contact with his ex…whether metaphorically or literally (which is why Mýa’s “Case of the Ex” is owed a great debt in both singles’ cases). Or, perhaps worse still, when he constantly (whether openly admitting it or not) compares his ex to his current girlfriend. In ways both insidious and overt that eventually make him go back to the ex in question because he feels that only she can fulfill what he “really” needs, and maybe he made a mistake in leaving her in the first place (see: Ben Affleck with Jennifer Lopez). Carpenter’s “Taste” speaks to the latter, while Rodrigo’s “Obsessed” details how a current girlfriend in the “three’s a crowd” permutation is the one more fixated on an ex than the boyfriend who was actually with her (ergo, the lyrics, “If I told you how much I think about her/You’d think I was in love”).

    Considering Rodrigo and Carpenter’s love triangle history (with a mid white guy, mind you—which just goes to show that it really is “Slim Pickins” out there, even for meticulously groomed celebrities), one might speculate that there’s a certain element of “Taste” that’s retroactively directed at her. Especially if she listened to “Obsessed” (which of course she did). However, most feel that Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello are the inspiration rather than Joshua Bassett and Rodrigo. And yet, there’s no denying that the latter two were the “OGs” in terms of providing Carpenter with plenty of raw material for this subject matter. Just as Carpenter likely helped furnish a blueprint for Rodrigo’s “Obsessed,” a “rock” (by pop standards)-oriented track during which she moodily sings, “I’m so obsessed with your ex/I know she’s been asleep on my side of your bed, and I can feel it.” Almost as though directly replying to that line, Carpenter casually boasts during “Taste,” “Now I’m gone, but you’re still layin’/Next to me, one degree of separation.” So it is that, at times, “Obsessed” and “Taste” come across like call and response companion pieces. (Though less feud-y and direct then, say, the call and response songs between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.)

    Rodrigo is already famously known for being a victim of self-flagellating comparison—of the sort that Carpenter’s playful confidence in most of her songs goes directly against. With “Taste,” she appears to be trolling just that sort of “Rodrigo girl” with inherently low self-esteem by goading her via the lines, “Every time you close your eyes/And feel his lips, you’re feelin’ mine/And every time you breathe his air/Just know I was already there.” She digs the knife even deeper by highlighting the “sloppy seconds” aspect of this dude getting passed back to the erstwhile ex, chirping, “You can have him if you like/I’ve been there, done that once or twice/And singin’ ‘bout it don’t mean I care/Yeah, I know I’ve been known to share.” The latter lyric is where Carpenter directly refers to the love triangle that was made notorious by Rodrigo through “drivers license,” during which she calls out “that blonde girl” her own ex is “probably with,” also getting the dig in that she’s “so much older than me” (the two are four years apart, but one supposes that seems like a lot when one is seventeen, the age Rodrigo was when she wrote the song).

    While Rodrigo’s standard songwriting method is to home in on every painful detail about a breakup (a trait picked up from Taylor Swift by many “next generation” girls), Carpenter, in contrast, has a much more sardonically glib approach (one that especially shines through on the undercuttingly emotional “Sharpest Tool” from Short n’ Sweet). That’s the tone that embodies “Taste” as she shrugs off the loss of a so-called man who was way too into his ex…to the point where he would end up getting back together with her (another theme present on Short n’ Sweet’s “Coincidence”).

    Even though, beneath all the jocular, braggadocious armor, Carpenter was likely just as obsessed with that boyfriend’s ex as Rodrigo when she admits, “I’m starin’ at her like I wanna get hurt/And I remember every detail you have evеr told me, so be careful, baby.” Where the song starts to veer away from the type of guy Carpenter is alluding to in “Taste” is when Rodrigo mentions, “You both have moved on, you don’t even talk/But I can’t help it, I got issues, I can’t help it, baby.” And yet, such a confession does only serve to underscore the point Carpenter makes in the chorus of “Taste”: “Well, I heard you’re back together and if that’s true/You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you/If you want forever, and I bet you do/Just know you’ll taste me too.” In other words, there’s always three people in a relationship: the “au courant” couple and the guy in said couple’s ex-girlfriend (since, in pop culture, women’s exes don’t seem to invoke as much jealousy, obsession and fear).

    Being that the narrative of “Obsessed” essentially mimics the plot of Sex and the City’s season episode, “Three’s A Crowd,” it’s fair to say that it also applies to “Taste.” And when Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) gives the rueful voiceover, “What Mr. Big didn’t realize was the past was sleeping right next to me” in response to him saying, “Let’s not talk about the past, please,” it’s only further proof that the ex has won even if she’s no longer with him. Because, yes, Carrie can still “taste” her when she’s kissing Big (Chris Noth). Which just goes to show that there is plenty of underrated vindication in being someone’s ex in terms of “leaving a mark”—even if you were foolish enough to think you could never live without them.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • As Charlize Theron’s J’Adore Era Comes to An End, Rihanna and Dior Have “Capitalism on the Brain”

    As Charlize Theron’s J’Adore Era Comes to An End, Rihanna and Dior Have “Capitalism on the Brain”

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    There’s nothing Rihanna won’t do these days—except, of course, release new music. As such, for her latest foray into the world of high fashion (including an on-again, off-again partnership with LVMH for Fenty), she’s opted to let Christian Dior use her 2016 track from ANTI, “Love on the Brain.” Specifically, in the new ad campaign that has officially let the world know that Charlize Theron is no longer looking as much like her long-standing print ads for the J’Adore fragrance as she used to (though that hasn’t stopped Dior from letting Johnny Depp continue to be the face for Sauvage). And no, it certainly doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the brand has decided it’s time for a “fresher” face (though Gen Z wouldn’t call anyone who’s thirty-six all that fresh) just as Theron has entered the last year of her forties (having turned forty-nine in August of this year).

    Because, unfortunately, it’s already been deemed “generous” enough that women have been “permitted” to keep “feigning” youth in their forties of late—but to “let” them continue to do it in their fifties would be too much for most (read: the patriarchal powers that be). Naturally, many would argue that Theron has been the face of J’Adore (which first launched in 1999) for the last twenty years, therefore it’s perfectly acceptable to pass the torch to someone else. And yet, the shift to “younger model” Rihanna still feels somewhat icky, like Nina Sayers taking over Beth MacIntyre’s lead in Black Swan. Even so, Rihanna is game enough to take up the mantle, paying homage to one of the original ads by reappearing against the backdrop of Versailles (still the height of French opulence) for what is sure to be the first of many commercials in promotion of its L’Or Essence de Parfum and others that might come up along the way. Particularly if Rihanna is planning to stick around for as long as Theron did (though they likely wouldn’t allow her to since she’ll be over fifty in the next twenty years—an unfathomable thought indeed).

    Incidentally, when Theron became the first celebrity face of the parfum, John Galliano was still Dior’s artistic director, having not yet gone off the rails with his antisemitic rant in 2010, which soon got him fired from Dior in 2011. When Theron was announced as the parfum’s “ambassador” in 2004, it was also said by then CEO and president of LVMH Perfume & Cosmetics, Pamela Baxter, “Ms. Theron was chosen because she represents modern femininity and embodies the spirit and energy of Dior. She is a classic beauty.” Rihanna, then, seems to signal an about-face for what the perfume “means” and who it’s catering to. Because, although beautiful, Rihanna is not conventionally so. Indeed, Steven Klein, the director of the commercial (being billed as “J’ADORE, THE FILM”—despite having a one-minute length) remarked upon “Rihanna’s incredibly contemporary beauty” as opposed to her “classic” kind. And, to be sure, the euphemism here seems to be that—gasp!—Rihanna is Black. A “quality” that high fashion houses have only recently “gotten around to” considering and including, with Rihanna’s partnership mimicking how Coco Mademoiselle tapped Whitney Peak to be their parfum’s face after years of the likes of Kate Moss and Keira Knightley in spokesperson roles. The sudden revelation of being in the twenty-first century, wherein “white girl beauty” is no longer the ideal, also seems pointedly timed for a moment when the world is braced for the U.S. to welcome not only its first female president but its first Black and Indian president.

    So it is that the tonal shift in terms of the “catch phrase” said at the end of Theron’s versus Rihanna’s commercial is also marked. While Theron opts to strip away her glamorous trappings (namely, all her jewelry pieces and her dress), Marvin Gaye’s “A Funky Space Reincarnation” plays in the background as Theron pronounces, “Gold is cold. Diamonds are dead. A limousine is a car. Don’t pretend. Feel what’s real. C’est ça que j’adore.” “Realness” continues to be a motif in Rihanna’s catch phrase as well, telling the audience as she walks on water at the end of the “film” (in a visual that harkens back to Madonna’s 2004 “Love Profusion” video, which was recreated for Estée Lauder’s Beyond Paradise commercial [also directed by Luc Besson] when it used the song in its ad), “Your dreams. Make them real.” It’s a tagline that appears to encourage people to retreat further into their delusions rather than acknowledging anything real whatsoever. As for “just” making dreams happen, well, it’s easier said than done, naturally.

    Needless to say, the implication here is that one’s dream is to live decadently while wearing J’Adore. Except that we all know Rihanna is likely wearing her own fragrance, Fenty Eau de Parfum—which actually sells for more on average than J’Adore. Evidently, no one seemed to feel this was a conflict of interest, assuming that Rihanna’s fans must have plenty of extra pocket money to support both fragrances. Besides, it’s not “cannibalism” if it isn’t the same brand (not like Starbucks opening within a half-mile radius of another Starbucks).

    What’s more, all is fair in love and capitalism. Two words that go hand in hand, especially with Rihanna choosing to wield “Love on the Brain” as the “film’s” song choice. Thus, once an earnest, hopelessly devoted power ballad, its new context has made it as base as any other song that gets tainted by use in a commercial (see also: The Beatles’ “Revolution” being featured in a Nike ad)—positioned as just another means to sell something. And what Rihanna and Dior are selling here is not just a certain lifestyle, but the aspiration to a certain lifestyle. As though trying to convince people that capitalism isn’t a failed system that we’re all still going through the motions of. Back in 2015, when Rihanna had her first entrée into a Dior commercial (part of the brand’s Secret Garden series), with the campaign also shot by Klein, it was easier to believe in such things. After all, that was arguably the last year before the U.S. truly let all veneers slip away, with Trump becoming president in 2016 (a few years later, Rihanna would deem him “the most mentally ill person in America”).

    Though that reality wasn’t made to sink in until the end of the year. Which is why, even for most of 2016 itself, there was still a more aspirational air to the U.S. Like in January of ‘16, when ANTI was released—its first single being “Work,” a song less about paid work than it was about the kind of work people have to do for love and orgasms. Of course, that didn’t stop the masses from making it their “every day I’m hustlin’” anthem. Which is why it was on the polar opposite spectrum for Rihanna’s fourth and final single from ANTI, “Love on the Brain,” to be so unapologetically about l’amour. More to the point, l’amour abusif. Something Rihanna has been almost as good at romanticizing as Lana Del Rey.

    In a way, however, abusive love is the only kind of love there can be with capitalism involved. Maybe that’s why, in this J’Adore “film,” there’s a certain violence to the way Rihanna abruptly ties her corset and then practically chokes herself with the signature gold choker necklace that Theron once wore for these commercials. To be sure, gold is the word that best describes the ad’s look (even if Theron formerly told us that “gold is old”). Unless, of course, one wanted to be more realistic and add “fool’s” to the front of it. Because there is nothing less realistic than being instructed, “Your dreams. Make them real.” It’s on par with the other capitalist credo that goes, “If you want it badly enough, you’ll find a way to get it.” Even if that means begging, borrowing, cheating or stealing to do so. This often being what happens when someone realizes they can’t “win” at capitalism. With no one ever taking into account that the celebrities who tout that they worked hard and made their dreams come true are part of either one of two categories: 1) an example of the one in a million chance that managed to penetrate the system or 2) born into wealth and/or a family name that could help them get ahead.

    So it is that most people have, that’s right, an abusive relationship with capitalism. And yet, Rihanna and Dior still seek to glamorize its frills. Perhaps that’s why they opted to leave out the lyrics from “Love on the Brain” that go, “You love when I fall apart/So you can put me together and throw me against the wall” and “It beats me black and blue, but it fucks me so good/And I can’t get enough.” For these are the sentiments that best describe the toxic dynamic that most people have with le capitalisme.

    It is also because of capitalism and its fundamental promotion of homogeneity and the status quo that, despite Rihanna being a “new” face for J’Adore, there is nothing actually new about this imagery. And, funnily enough, when Theron starred in Dior’s The New Absolu campaign in 2018 (which featured Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights” [mind you, after he had already shown his true colors with support for Trump by wearing a MAGA hat throughout 2018]), it looked very similar to the imagery Rihanna had already shown fans in her ANTIdiaRy. Namely, being immersed in an opulent bath while staring directly into the camera.

    Perhaps, in some way, unwittingly grafting Theron’s mise-en-scène from that ANTIdiaRy moment foreshadowed Rihanna’s eventual welcome into the “Dior family” as an official brand ambassador. Either way, the final result only serves to prove what Fredric Jameson said in The Antinomies of Realism: “society has ever been as standardized as this one, and the stream of human, social and historical temporality has never flowed quite so homogenously.” Even if “hidden” behind a shiny new face.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • A Timeline of Lily Allen and the Puppy Backlash

    A Timeline of Lily Allen and the Puppy Backlash

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    It all began, as most of Lily Allen’s controversies of late, with a glib comment on a podcast. More specifically, Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver’s podcast, Miss Me? And while it’s true that Allen has often claimed the defense of “these quotes were taken out of context” (like her assessment of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album—for which, to be fair, she did have the cojones to critique rather than blindly praise), there really wasn’t much to be taken out of context with her latest snafu.

    The stage was set for the incident at the end of the podcast’s August 19th episode, “School of Lyf,” during which Allen and Oliver forewarned that the latter would be absent the following week (which was only just, considering Allen was absent for two episodes’ worth of the show, getting her husband, David Harbour, to sub in for her while she jetted off to British Columbia, one of many locales visited during her summer break). And then, as though to seal Allen’s fate of doom, Oliver said at the end of the episode, “Good luck next week, you’ll be great.” Foreshadowing indeed. For in the episode that followed (August 22nd’s “Duck, Duck, Pigeon”), Allen managed to do the exact opposite, biffing the whole show in Oliver’s absence by bringing up that she and “the girls” (her two children, Marnie and Ethel) were thinking of getting a new puppy and naming it Jude Bellingham. Choosing a footballer’s name for a puppy was how Allen brought up the subject in the first place, telling the guest co-host, Steve Jones (a former fellow presenter of Oliver’s for T4), that she and her husband don’t know the names of any sports players. And so it was that the topic of conversation leading to the mention of a new puppy potentially being named after the one sports player whose name she does know secured her ruin.

    And yes, as she soon found out, the only thing worse (in terms of public backlash) than denouncing Beyoncé is flippantly denouncing a dog. This by mentioning that even before the thought of getting another new puppy, Allen had already tried her hand at adopting a rescue during the pandemic era. And, per her account, it ultimately failed because the dog ate her passport. Which also came up only by coincidence when Jones jokingly mentioned what a big commitment getting a dog with Harbour is, despite the two already being married. In response, Allen said, “You know what? We actually did adopt a dog together already, but then it ate my passport and so I took her back to the home.” Yes, it was said that nonchalantly, with a little chuckle at the end.

    When PETA called out Allen for that chuckle (among other issues with her handling of the dog), Allen hit back with, “People laugh when they talk about painful things all the time, it’s quite normal.” And while, sure, that’s not untrue, the way Allen delivered the anecdote was utterly icy, as though it was just another “crazy story” to tell. More “fodder” for a podcast.

    Jones, perhaps not wanting to go against his co-host’s “vibe,” answered with, “Ate your passport? That’s a hungry dog.” Of course, there was no mention of where the passports were being stored that might have made them a little too accessible to a new puppy with monster chewing predilections. In that regard, Allen also came across as entitled, as though the onus wasn’t at all on her to secure the passports in a place that would be inaccessible to a dog (e.g., a safe deposit box). Nonetheless, Allen blamed only the dog as she recounted, “[Mary] ate all three of our passports, and they had our visas in [them] and I cannot tell you how much money it cost me to get everything replaced [maybe because if she did say the amount out loud, it would sound ridiculous, as her money plus Harbour’s Marvel money equals no amount is that high] ‘cause it was in Covid, and so it was just an absolute logistical nightmare. And because my, the father of my children lives in England, I couldn’t get them back to see their dad for, like, four months, five months because this fucking dog had eaten the passports. And I just couldn’t look at her, I was like, ‘You’ve ruined my life.’”

    Everything about the way she describes it sounds not only Cruella-esque (except that, nefarious purpose aside, Cruella actually wanted dogs), but, basically, like a minorly inconvenienced rich person’s viewpoint. Worse still, a rich person who doesn’t even know how to spend her money in a way that could easily have accommodated the dog staying in her home. What’s more, for someone of affluence, who can simply pay to have their problems solved, a passport being chewed is not “life-ruining” so much as inopportune. In point of fact, saying the dog ruined her life is a peak example of hyperbole. Rich white person’s hyperbole.

    Even so, Allen perhaps sensed she ought to pad the anecdote with a better reason, adding, “She was also, like…passports weren’t the only thing she ate, she was a very badly behaved dog and I really tried very hard with her, but it just didn’t work out. And the passports was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.”

    Jones then finally steered the conversation away from Lily Allen and dog ownership by asking her what last name she uses on her passport (in other words, if she ended up taking Harbour’s last name—the answer being: no). But the damage had been done. And of all the things Allen has said, this might be her most damning. The thing that revealed her to be the very type of person she claims not to be: a privileged nepo baby with no concept of how “rich white lady” she comes across. In letting the mask “slip,” as it were, Allen invoked the wrath of dog lovers the world over, with hundreds of comments flooding into her various tweets about the backlash, including, “This kind of didn’t seem like a people laugh when they’re sad situation though. It seems like you put it out there not expecting the kickback you’d get for saying it and now you’re trying to dig yourself out of a massive crater sized hole!,” “It wasn’t about the dog’s welfare though, was it? It was you screwing up and then blaming the dog. What happens if the replacement chews stuff? Do you have another home already lined up?” and “Narcissism run rampant. Lily can’t shut her mouth. She is an awful person. She’s enjoying this, @peta. Leave her be to go hang out with Lena Dunham.”

    Because yes, PETA did put Allen on blast with their tweet, “As someone high profile with a platform, what you say matters. Laughing about this ‘f******’ dog being sent back sends a dangerous message. Every move is traumatic to a homeless dog who then can never expect this home is forever.” Allen then bit back sarcastically with, “Also thank you to @peta for adding fuel to the fire. Very responsible of you.” (It reeks of Lana Del Rey saying, “…thanks for the Karen comments tho. V helpful” when she had her own unique backlash in 2020.) Few were wont to let Allen pivot the blame for the backlash on PETA, with one user replying, “What added fuel to the fire was telling the story of returning your dog to the shelter whilst having a little giggle over it.”

    Allen also attempted to paint the headlines about her comments as a “distortion” when, in fact, all the quotes from the podcast were featured in most of the ink spilled about it. It was only when she further detailed her issues with Mary on Twitter that she might have given better insight into her difficulties beyond mere passport chewing. Part of that explanation went as follows: “…she developed pretty severe separation anxiety and would act out in all manner of ways. She couldn’t be left alone for more than 10 mins, she had 3 long walks a day 2 by us and 1 with a local dog walker and several other dogs, we worked with the shelter that we rescued her from and they referred us to a behavioral specialist and a professional trainer, it was a volunteer from the shelter who would come and dog sit her when we were away, and after many months and much deliberation everyone was in agreement that our home wasn’t the best fit for Mary.” Emphasis on the word months, as in: Mary didn’t last very long at the Allen-Harbour abode. Which does make one wonder if, had she been given a little more time, there might have been a breakthrough.

    In any case, if Allen thought the dog had “ruined her life” before this metaphorical flogging, she’s surely convinced of it now. As for the Miss Me? episodes that followed “Duck, Duck, Pigeon,” another one, “Rage Against the Washing Machine,” with Jones continuing to sub in for Oliver, aired sans Allen mentioning the rage against her. This was followed by a “best of” episode called, “The Queen of MySpace,” wherein Oliver explains of Allen’s absence, “Everyone’s had quite heady summers, including Lily and I. We’ve been all around the world and we’ve been bringing you Miss Me? from wherever we’ve been and I feel we’ve done a pretty good job. But Lily Allen has finally got to a part of Italy that is so deep and rural that there is no wi-fi.” In other words, Allen needed to retreat from the noise of her detractors post-puppygate. A luxury that, yes, a rich lady can enjoy—as much as she can enjoy effectively training and acclimating a difficult/needy rescue dog… That is, if she really wanted to.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Crow 2024 Is More Caca Than Caw-Caw, But That’s to Be Expected When Compared to the Original

    The Crow 2024 Is More Caca Than Caw-Caw, But That’s to Be Expected When Compared to the Original

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    In a perfect world, remakes and reboots wouldn’t need to exist at all. Or if they did, the final product would be the result of truly careful, measured storytelling methods that only served to elevate rather than insult the original. Alas, as most know, the world is far from perfect. In fact, it’s as much of a shitshow as the one portrayed in Rupert Sanders’ version of The Crow. And as Sanders’ third movie as director, it’s done little to boost his prospects for directing in the future. This further compounded by his previous credits being Snow White and the Huntsman (mired in scandal when Sanders, then married, was caught having an affair with the film’s star, Kristen Stewart) and Ghost in the Shell. The latter being yet another remake that was panned for more than just casting Scarlett Johansson in a Japanese woman’s role (though that didn’t cause nearly as much outrage as her brief bid to play a trans man). Still, the reviews for Ghost in the Shell seem utterly kind in comparison to what’s been lobbed at The Crow, and from no less than the film’s original director, Alex Proyas, calling it a “a cynical cash grab,” then adding, “Not much cash to grab it seems.”

    True indeed, for The Crow made just barely under five million dollars in its opening weekend. It had a fifty-million-dollar budget to recoup. Unfortunately for the studio (Lionsgate), it couldn’t even manage to beat out 2009’s Coraline, which placed at number seven in the United States’ top ten box office (to The Crow’s number eight) after being re-released in theaters in honor of its fifteenth anniversary. The likelihood of The Crow remaining in the top ten at all during its second week of release doesn’t seem promising. All of which is to say: what the hell what wrong? That question isn’t too hard to answer.

    For a start, with a movie like The Crow, which has such a strong and devoted following, the OG fans of the film were likely never going to get on board with an “updated” (read: far more “corporatized”) version. Especially one that so often feels as though it desperately wants to check off multiple boxes in different genres. For there’s the “romantic” aspect of it, which often mirrors what Joker and Harley Quinn seem to have going on in the upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux, complete with Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) meeting at a rehab facility called Serenity, the supernatural aspect and the Tarantino-level revenge and violence aspect. Something that FKA Twigs herself called out in an interview promoting the film, foolishly thinking that it was a good thing that The Crow has such “hodgepodge energy” by saying, “I was amazed at the juxtaposition between the front half, the middle and the end of the movie. It’s almost like there’s three genres in one. At the beginning, you have this incredible coming-of-age love story about these two outsiders who are just desperate to feel at home… and then in the middle, it’s this psychological thriller, and then at the end, you know, it’s kind of pure gore and horror…”

    In short, it’s all “kind of” whatever, trying to be everything to everyone perhaps because the writers were aware that it was never going to measure up to the 1994 version, so why not just try to appeal to as many audience members as possible? A “strategy” that, in the end, serves to appeal to no one. Save for, at best, those who have no knowledge of The Crow’s previous iterations as a comic book or Proyas film.

    Funnily enough, one of the writers in question of The Crow 2024, Zach Baylin, was not so long ago nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for King Richard (which lost that year to Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast). So yes, it’s quite an about-face to go from Oscar-nominated to more than likely Razzie-nominated. As for his co-writer, William Schneider, The Crow inauspiciously marks his first writing credit on a full-length feature. It seems both writers ended up on autopilot after a certain point, mish-mashing the timeline of the narrative and eventually losing all sight of anything resembling “logical time” with an ending that not only reverts to a lazy “rewind” tactic, but totally excises the original killers in favor of having the two OD as a reason for their death (or, in Shelly’s case, near death). And, speaking of being junkies, Skarsgård and Twigs have way-too-perfect teeth to fit that casting bill.

    As for the Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas) of 1994’s The Crow, let’s just say there was a lot more depth to their characters that didn’t rely on the sole “trait” of making them drug addicts. Indeed, Eric and Shelly aren’t junkies at all in the original, just two “ghouls” in love (with Eric also being a musician). As though to highlight how “emo” they are in their love for each other (Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas-style) from the get-go, upon unearthing their bodies right after they’re murdered in their Detroit loft, Sergeant Albrecht (Ernie Hudson, of Ghostbusters fame) finds a wedding invitation for the following day, October 31st, prompting one of his fellow policemen to ask, “Who the fuck gets married on Halloween anyhow?” Albrecht replies, “Nobody.”

    That was the answer then. The answer now is: plenty of people. Some of whom were likely influenced by the “macabre” stylings of Eric and Shelly’s coupledom (later mirrored in such “unions” as the ones shown in Candy, Corpse Bride and even Only Lovers Left Alive). That sense of, “If you jump, I jump” (or, in The Notebook’s case, “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird”—an appropriate saying for The Crow). And yes, jumping off a bridge does come up in The Crow 2024, with Shelly asking Eric if he would, essentially, die for her. The answer is, needless to say, a resounding yes. But the “intensity” of their “love” for one another often feels forced rather than authentic—even though that’s clearly the aim of the actors involved. And yes, Skarsgård and Twigs seem to be doing the best they can with the material they’re given, with Twigs likely attracted to the project because it furnished her with her first opportunity to play a lead role. Though perhaps she might have been better off sticking to the periphery if this was going to be the result…

    As for the decision to add the demonic element into the mix (all in keeping with the trend of satanic panic this year) via Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), it’s utterly underdeveloped—along with just about everything else in the movie. But this isn’t to say that The Crow 2024 lacks style where substance is totally missing. The soundtrack, visual effects and, yes, “aesthetic” are nothing to be balked at, even if they can never capture (or even dream of recreating) the genuine “lo-fi grit” of Proyas’ film. The effect, instead, is a prime example of what happens when a corporate entity tries to commodify something truly artistic: the authenticity is lost, blatantly so.

    In many ways, an “update” (or “reinvention,” as Stephen Norrington, at one point attached to write the script in the early period of its development hell) of The Crow was always going to be doomed. The film was already known for being “cursed” after Brandon Lee died on set after an improperly loaded prop gun killed him. What’s more, in trying to get a “reboot”/“remake” off the ground, a number of actors so ill-suited to the part (e.g., Bradley Cooper) became attached that any fan of the original couldn’t possibly have high hopes.

    A few years back, when the project seemed permanently foiled, Proyas hit the nail on the head in terms of addressing the core issue of trying to remake The Crow at all: “It’s not just a movie that can be remade. It’s one man’s legacy. And it should be treated with that level of respect.” Obviously, though, there wasn’t much respect for the original if they weren’t even going to include at least a nod to Sarah (Rochelle Davis), who served not only as a key thread of the film, but also its narrator, the one who tells the audience from the outset, “People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens, that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can’t rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.”

    Alas, “the crow” can’t right this particular wrong: The Crow 2024. Another one of its fundamental problems being what The Crow comic book creator James O’Barr boiled it down to: “I think the reality is, no matter who you get to star in it, or if you get Ridley Scott to direct it and spend two hundred million dollars, you’re still not gonna top what Brandon Lee and Alex Proyas did in that first ten-million-dollar movie” (Side note: it was originally a fifteen-million-dollar budget, with an additional eight added to it when Proyas decided to complete the remaining scenes with Lee with CGI and a stand-in.)

    But, if nothing else comes out of The Crow 2024 (apart from disappointment and tarnished reputations), there is certainly the silver lining that filming in Prague, with all its underground raves and nightclubs, ended up inspiring the sound and tone of FKA Twigs’ upcoming album, Eusexua.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • On Carrie Bradshaw Developing the Idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

    On Carrie Bradshaw Developing the Idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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    Although it’s easy to shit on Sex and the City in the present, there are occasional moments in the show when one realizes how truly visionary it was for its time. You know, going to a tantric sex workshop and vaguely acknowledging white privilege while you’re getting a pedicure—things like that. But one thing Sex and the City rarely gets credit for is providing the kernel of the idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This occurred in season four of the series; specifically, episode six: “Time and Punishment” (the same episode where Charlotte York [Kristin Davis] was shamed for having “free time” instead of working). Which aired three years before Eternal Sunshine… was released in 2004.

    But back in July of 2001, when “Time and Punishment” first aired, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) had the sudden “revelation” that cheating on Aidan Shaw (John Corbett) back in mid-season three was the worst mistake of her life—or at least her romantic life (which, in truth, embodies one hundred percent of Carrie’s existence). Therefore, narcissist that she is, Carrie obviously believes it’s within her power to get him back…just because she decides on a whim that’s what she wants. And apparently, she’s not wrong in her assumption, wearing Aidan down with her seduction methods (however stalker-y) until he concedes that, sure, he wants to get back together.

    But before that glorious (for Carrie) moment, Bradshaw gives us one of her signature voiceover “insights” from the column de la semaine she’s writing, ruminating on a person’s inability to forgive if they can’t really forget. So it is that she tell us: “Later that day, I got to thinking about relationships and partial lobotomies. Two seemingly different ideas that might be perfect together, like chocolate and peanut butter. Think how much easier it would all be if there was some swift surgical procedure to whisk away all the ugly memories and mistakes and leave only the fun trips and special holidays.” Yes, Carrie is perfectly describing what Charlie Kaufman would call “Lacuna Inc.” in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Minus the part where even the fun trips and special holidays are remembered. For, in Carrie’s ideal version of relationship memory erasure, you still at least remember the person existed in your life prior to the “procedure.”

    Kaufman and Michel Gondry did that concept one better by making it key for all traces of the person to be forgotten. Even though it only set up someone like Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) and Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) for the trap of gravitating right back toward the person they ended up finding toxic in the first place. Which is also something that Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice addresses in a more ominous way. But what Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind prefers to do is position the inevitable “re-attraction” between two people who were already unable to make it work before as something with a more hopeful tinge. Not just more hopeful than what Blink Twice does with the concept, but also with what ends up happening to Carrie and Aidan by the end of season four (hint: total emotional catastrophe/an even more painful breakup than the first time around).

    However, before the reasons for their first breakup are proven yet again (and tenfold), to conclude her thoughts on the matter of “forgiving and forgetting,” Carrie adds, “But until that day arrives, what to do? Rely on the same old needlepoint philosophy of ‘forgive and forget’? And even if a couple can manage the forgiveness, has any[one] ever really conquered the forgetness? Can you ever really forgive, if you can’t forget?” In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there’s no need to forgive because all has been forgotten.

    As for setting up the premise for “Time and Punishment,” the episode that precedes it, “Baby, Talk Is Cheap,” also refers to the “unforgettability” (therefore, unforgivability) of what Carrie did to Aidan. An egregious sin he feels obliged to remind her of when she has the gall to come to his door late at night and plead her case for getting back together. None of her “logic” trumps the fact that, as Aidan screams, “You broke my heart!” But Carrie sees that only as a “minor detail” when presenting him with the “argument,” “Look, I know that you’re probably scared and I would be too, but it’s different now. Things are different. I-I’m different.” She then tries to prove it by taking a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and declaring, “Cigarettes, gone.” Of course, if they were really “gone,” they wouldn’t have been in her purse in the first place.

    Nonetheless, Carrie continues to insist that this “new” her was clearly not responsible for the actions of the old her and, thus, shouldn’t be punished by being denied another chance. She assures Aidan, “Seriously, all bad habits gone. This is a whole new thing because I miss you. And I’ve missed you.” As though her desire for him alone should be enough for him to want to forget about all the pain she caused him. And when Aidan screams the aforementioned line at her audacity, Carrie displays the kind of immaturity and embarrassing behavior she’s known for by simply running away instead of staying to face the firing squad, as it were.

    Ultimately, though, she gets what she wants: for Aidan to submit to her. Granted, not without an initial bout of passive aggressive behavior in “Time and Punishment” that finally prompts Carrie to say of the co-worker he’s been openly flirting with, “Why don’t you just fuck her, then we can both be bad.” When he comes to her door at the end of the episode, Carrie tells him, “I know that you can’t forget what happened, but I hope that you can forgive me.” But she was onto something before in her column—the idea that no true forgiveness can be attained without forgetting. Ergo, her wish for a Lacuna Inc.-like enterprise that wouldn’t “exist” until three years later…perhaps after Kaufman caught sight of Carrie’s column. And while Carrie might not have been the first to wish for this form of a “relationship lobotomy,” she was the only one to say it out loud in such a crystallized way before Eternal Sunshine… came along to perfect the notion.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Boons and Banes of Memory Erasure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blink Twice

    The Boons and Banes of Memory Erasure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blink Twice

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    Romy Schneider once said, “Memories are the best things in life, I think.” But are they, really, if some of them serve only as a brutal, triggering source of trauma? In both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blink Twice, that’s the main type of memory being dealt with, therefore suppressed. But while one is a “rom-com” (Charlie Kaufman-style), the other is a horrifying thriller with a #MeToo slant. Both, however, do center on “the necessity” of memory erasure as it pertains to the relationship between men and women.

    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, of course, is much “lighter” by comparison. Even though, in its time and its place, it was considered just as “bleak” as it was “quirky.” It’s also more hyper-focused on one relationship in particular, in contrast to Blink Twice speaking to the overall power dynamics between men and women as it relates to sex rather than “romance.” More to the point, the power dynamics between rich men and “regular” women. In Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s narrative, the main “sufferers” (or beneficiaries, depending on one’s own personal views) of select memory loss are Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) and Joel Barish (Jim Carrey). But it is the former who “brings it on both of them,” as she’s the one to initially enlist the memory-erasing services of Lacuna Inc., run by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). Joel merely follows suit after comprehending what she’s done, deciding that she shouldn’t be the only person in the relationship permitted the luxury of forgetting about all that they shared together. Good and bad.

    So it is that he, too, undergoes the procedure, briefed on the ins and out of it by Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunst), the receptionist at Lacuna, and Dr. Mierzwiak before opting to excise Clementine from his brain as well (in a scene later to be repurposed by Ariana Grande for the “we can’t be friends [wait for your love]” video). Of course, this isn’t to say he’s not extremely hurt by her “whimsical” decision to “remove” him. Alas, by way of explanation, Dr. Mierzwiak can only offer, “She wanted to move on. We provide that possibility.” One can imagine that Slater King (Channing Tatum) tells himself something similar about his own nefarious operation on a private island that might as well be referred to as Little Saint James (a.k.a. the former “Epstein Island”).

    Sex and the City, incidentally, provided something of a precursor to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind “idea kernel” (de facto, the Blink Twice one) in the form of the season four episode, “Time and Punishment.” This due to Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) theme for her column of the week being whether or not you can ever really forgive someone if you can’t forget what they did (to you). The answer, in both Eternal Sunshine… and Blink Twice, seems to be a resounding no. Though, in the former, there appears to be a greater chance for redemption even after the couple remembers everything that happened between them (and still decides to give it another shot). This courtesy of Mary, who not only unveils the truth to all of Lacuna’s clients (or “patients”), but also unearths her own bitter truth vis-à-vis memory erasure: Howard did it to her (per her request) after the two had an affair. And yet, just as it is for Frida (Naomi Ackie) in Blink Twice, it’s as though we are doomed to repeat the same behavior/gravitate toward the same toxic person regardless of whether the slate (a.k.a. the mind) is wiped clean or not.

    In Blink Twice, Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut (which she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum), that gravitation proves to be much more harmful for Frida, who drags her best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat), along for the ride after infiltrating Slater’s fancy benefit dinner for his requisite “foundation.” Although the two are initially working the party as cater waiters, Frida has them both switch into gowns (which scream “trying too hard” while still looking embarrassingly cheap). Naturally, Slater invites them to accompany him and his entourage back to the island where he’s been sequestered in order to “work on himself” as part of a grand performance of a public apology for “bad behavior” past (there’s no need to get specific about what that might have entailed, for there’s a whole range of bad behavior [typically, sexual abuse/harassment-related] that female viewers can easily imagine for themselves). Though, usually, if one is truly working on themselves, they do so by not buying a private island to retreat to. By actually trying to exist in and adapt to the world around them, rather than creating an entirely new one that fits their own “needs.” But that’s the thing: Slater and his ilk don’t want to adapt, don’t want to acknowledge that things have changed and so, too, must their old ways. Instead, they’ve set up a “paradise” for themselves that happens to be every woman’s hell.

    The only requirement to keep them there? Scrubbing any memories they have of being sexually assaulted every night on the island. In lieu of Lacuna, Slater needs only a perfume called Desideria, conveniently crafted from a flower that’s only found on that particular island. It’s, in many ways, a slightly more implausible method for making someone forget a traumatic experience than all-out memory erasure through a “scientific procedure” like Lacuna’s. But, for Kravitz’s purposes, it works. Those purposes extend not only to holding up a mirror to the ongoing and new-fangled ways that men, even post-#MeToo, still manage to behave like barbarians, but also to the ways in which women “self-protect” by conveniently “removing” memories that are too painful to deal with, especially when it comes to men and their egregious comportment. This, in part, is why the Desideria is so effective. There’s a sense that the women of the island are only too ready to forget/ignore what horrors befell them the previous night.

    In the abovementioned Sex and the City episode, there’s a scene at the end where Carrie repeats (seven times) to Aidan (John Corbett), “You have to forgive me” in different “Oscar-worthy” manners. Just as Slater repeats, “I’m sorry” in different dramatic ways until he then askes Frida if she forgives him yet. Seeing (and expecting) that she definitely doesn’t, it only serves to prove his point that, no, you cannot forgive without forgetting (though, to be fair/in this case, maybe just don’t act like women owe you unfettered access to their bodies/treat them like disposable objects designed solely for your amusement and there won’t be any need to forgive).

    Thus, he considers himself in the right (or at least that he “had no choice”) for doing what he did in order to get what he wanted out of her and the other women he lures to the island with his charm (and, of course, the allure of his wealth). In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there is also a belief, on Clementine’s part, in being “in the right” for willingly expunging her own memories without any man needing to do it for her. In this sense, one might say that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is all about the importance of agency in having certain aspects of your memories erased for the sake of self-preservation.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Zoë Kravitz Aims to Open Eyes With Blink Twice

    Zoë Kravitz Aims to Open Eyes With Blink Twice

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    As a film whose working title was Pussy Island, it’s to be expected that the subject matter of Blink Twice is “controversial.” That is, if one is “off-put” by the notion that women are still “bitter” about men’s behavior—even after all the supposed progress that’s occurred in the wake of #MeToo. And yes, it’s no coincidence that Zoë Kravitz first started writing the screenplay (with E.T. Feigenbaum, who also wrote an episode of the Kravitz-starring High Fidelity) the same year that the “male backlash” began. Or rather, the appropriate and long overdue response to an abuse of power so entrenched in “the system,” it took ousting many men at the top for anything to start making a difference.

    Some of those men at the top were known for going to Little Saint James Island a.k.a. “Epstein Island.” Like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Donald Trump. None of these men ever got quite the smackdown that Harvey Weinstein did, but there was no denying that further ignominy befell their already less than upstanding reputations when it came to being pervy sexual abusers. Something that happens to Blink Twice’s own “Jeffrey Epstein,” Slater King (Channing Tatum). A tech billionaire that someone like Frida (Naomi Ackie) can’t help but lust after and idolize—something we see as she scrolls through her phone and adoringly watches an interview he gives about how he’s a “changed man” now that he’s “taken some time” to “reassess” himself and his priorities on the remote island he currently lives on (and, needless to say, owns). It’s all very familiar-sounding, with no shortage of potential inspirations for Kravitz when it comes to similar rich douchebags from which to mine material.

    As Frida watches the interview on the toilet, transfixed, her drooling is interrupted by her best friend and roommate, Jess (Alia Shawkat). When Frida admits she doesn’t have her portion of the money for the super because she’s invested it in something else for the two of them, Jess is surprisingly chill about it. Almost as if there’s nothing Frida could do that would ever make Jess turn her back. Such is the nature of a truly strong female friendship bond. By the same token, that doesn’t mean that women don’t get in their fair share of contentious spats, one of which arises between Jess and Frida when, while the two are at work (serving as cater waiters—or, for the more misogynistically-inclined, “cocktail waitresses”), Frida accuses Jess of having no self-respect because she keeps going back to the same toxic asshole every time they break up. This, of course, will turn out to be extremely ironic later on, when the biggest twist of Blink Twice comes to light, and viewers see that Frida has been doing exactly the same thing.

    In any case, Frida immediately realizes how harsh she sounds and apologizes right away to Jess as they continue to prep for serving drinks at Slater’s big, fancy event (with their male boss annoyingly telling them, “Don’t forget to smile!”)—presumably something “benefit”-oriented. It doesn’t much matter to Frida, who is so unabashed in her eye-fucking of Slater from afar, that it comes as no surprise when she tells Jess that what she spent all her money on happened to be two gowns for each of them to wear so that they could infiltrate the event as guests rather than servers (though, to be honest, the gowns look more like they’re from Shein than, say, Chanel). Jess, ever the down-ass bitch, complies even though she is not even remotely affected by Slater’s looks or wealth. Eventually making a fool out of herself by tripping in the most visible way possible, Slater takes Frida under his wing at the event and, by the end, the two have such a “connection” that he decides to invite her and Jess back to his island with the entourage he’s been parading.

    If it all sounds somewhat implausible, Kravitz is well-aware of that, stating during an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, “I like playful filmmaking.” This is made apparent by her use of stark, all-white backdrops (think: Blur’s “The Universal” video, itself an homage to A Clockwork Orange) whenever the audience is in Slater’s world outside of the island, as though to emphasize that, to him, there are no gray areas. Kravitz also added, “I like when the audience has a sense of, ‘It’s a movie,’ you know what I mean? And we’re all in it together and it’s not reality.” But it is, indeed, very true to the reality of how power is so grossly abused by white men with billions (or even just millions) of dollars, finding loopholes for being as disgusting and depraved as they want to be no matter how much cancel culture continues to thrive post-#MeToo. In this case, that loophole is found through the manipulation of the five women on the island’s memory. In addition to Frida and Jess, there’s also Sarah (Adria Arjona), Camilla (Liz Caribel) and Heather (Trew Mullen), all of whom keep spraying themselves with a perfume called Desideria that’s strategically placed in their rooms, just begging them to use it. As Slater says, it’s made from a special “extract” of a flower that can only be found on the island. How convenient for him and his fellow rich white men that it also acts as a kind of super-charged Rohypnol.

    It is the memory loss element of Blink Twice that most closely aligns it with Jordan Peele’s own seminal psychological thriller, Get Out. For the loss of each woman’s memories of the particularly traumatic events that happen to them during the night are what make them trapped inside a kind of “sunken place” during the day. Thus, prone to chirpily answering, almost Stepford wife-style, “I’m having a great time!” whenever Slater asks, “Are you having a good time?” Their muddled memory—almost tantamount to being lobotomized—makes it retroactively all the more cruel when they first arrive and a Polaroid is taken of the group as Vic (Christian Slater), Slater’s “right- and left-hand man,” shouts, “Everybody say, ‘Makin’ memories!’” The irony being, of course, that the women on the island will have no ability to recall what’s going on. What horrors are being wrought upon their bodies when night falls.

    At one point, Slater promises a fellow rich man named, what else, Rich (Kyle MacLachlan) that he can do whatever he wants because: it’s like the more traumatic the event, the more readily they forget. And it is true—women’s minds are extremely adept at that form of self-protection, mainly because dealings with men in any sphere tend to be violating in some way or another, so “blotting out” becomes a kind of automatic coping mechanism. And in the world of rich men, violation is merely the rule, not the exception.

    Of course, in these “polite” times, men like Slater feign going along with the “new world order.” For example, when the group arrives on the island and Stacy (Geena Davis, in a kind of Ghislaine Maxwell role) starts collecting everyone’s phone into a bag, Slater assures, “You don’t have to do anything that you don’t wanna do.” But, of course, the pressure to oblige him—one that is perennially ingrained within women—gets the better even of Jess. Even though it is she who is the one to be hit much more quickly with the revelation, “Did we just jet off to a billionaire’s island with a bunch of strangers?” For the number one rule learned by every millennial as a child was: don’t talk to or go anywhere with strangers. Frida insists, “He’s not a stranger. He’s Slater King.” Such is the danger of 1) parasocial relationships being intensely nurtured in a social media age and 2) the automatic carte blanche that powerful people—nay, powerful men—are given when it comes to trust. Despite all long-running evidence that suggests only inherent distrust ought to be placed in them.

    It doesn’t take long for Frida and Jess to fall into the “routine” of the island. Which goes something like: wake up, get high, swim, start drinking, eat a dinner prepared by Cody (Simon Rex), another alpha male (though there are also beta males like Tom [Haley Joel Osment] and Lucas [Levon Hawke, a fellow nepo baby like Kravitz), get so trashed you “black out,” repeat. Soon enough, the days and nights all meld into one, with Frida and the others long ago losing track of what day it is or even how long they’ve been on the island. At one point, Frida asks Slater, “When are we leaving?” He shrugs, “Whenever you want.” Naturally, that’s not true, nor is it really an answer. Besides, he knows Frida will soon forget, informing her during one of their “intimate walks,” “Forgetting is a gift.”

    Indeed, one would think that the female gender does have collective amnesia sometimes when considering how willing they are to “forgive” men for all their transgressions. And this, too, is another key theme of Blink Twice, which essentially posits the Carrie Bradshaw-penned question: “Can you ever really forgive, if you can’t forget?” As Slater will tell Frida during their final showdown, the answer is definitely no, resulting in an Oscar clip-type performance as he angrily repeats, “I’m sorry” to her and then demands if she forgives him yet. “No?,” he says when she doesn’t reply. Of course not.

    Nor does she seem likely to ever forgive a woman like Stacy, who is not only complicit in what’s happening on the island, but also prefers the “ignorance is bliss” philosophy that Slater keeps promoting through Desideria. That Davis is involved in the film is also especially significant considering she runs the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which “advocates for equal representation of women and men.” Blink Twice certainly has plenty of that. Though perhaps the most memorable character out of anyone is the woman billed as “Badass Maid” (María Elena Olivares). Tasked primarily with catching the snakes on the island that, according to Slater, have become a blight, it is she who will become the savior of the oppressed in this fucked-up situation.

    As for Frida’s past history with Slater (which she, of course, forgot), it begs the question: are people—particularly women—doomed to repeatedly gravitate toward the same toxic situation so long as it “feels good” enough of the time to forget, so to speak, about how bad it is overall? The conclusion of the film would like to make viewers believe otherwise, ending on a “hopeful” even if “sweet revenge” note.

    As for changing the name from Pussy Island to Blink Twice, it wasn’t just because marketing the film was going to be nothing short of an ordeal with the MPA’s censorship limitations, but also because, as Kravitz found, “Interestingly enough, after researching it, women were offended by the word, and women seeing the title were saying, ‘I don’t want to see that movie,’ which is part of the reason I wanted to try and use the word, which is trying to reclaim the word, and not make it something that we’re so uncomfortable using. But we’re not there yet. And I think that’s something I have the responsibility as a filmmaker to listen to.”

    Perhaps if women had taken the word in the spirit intended when it refers to callow men, there might have been more acceptance. However, regardless of the title change, Blink Twice will undoubtedly still come across as “hardcore” to plenty of filmgoers. Mainly the ones who don’t like to see a mirror held up to a society run by soulless, amoral, bacchanalian knaves. Post-#MeToo or not.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega Compete Over Mid White Guy in Death Becomes Her-Inspired “Taste” Video

    Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega Compete Over Mid White Guy in Death Becomes Her-Inspired “Taste” Video

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    Some might initially be led to believe that Sabrina Carpenter’s video for her third single from Short n’ Sweet, “Taste,” is Quentin Tarantino-oriented with its cautionary opening title card (in a Tarantino-y font), “Parental Advisory and Viewer Warning: The following video contains explicit content and depicts graphic violence which may be offensive to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.” But no, it becomes quickly apparent that the Dave Meyers-directed video is a full-on homage to 1992’s Death Becomes Her. And while many attempts at homage in music videos turn out to be mere shot-for-shot re-creations (see: Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s “Fancy” or Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next”), Carpenter chooses to riff on the Death Becomes Her concept rather than totally copy each scene.

    Thus, the video begins with a close-up on a “girlie bed” contrasted by “masc” accoutrements like guns and knives, with Meyers sure to give an extra-long pause on the Prada lipstick (brand partnerships are so important, n’est-ce pas?). All the while, Carpenter creepily sings, “Rock-a-bye baby, snug in your bed/Right now you are sleeping/And soon you’ll be…dead.” Carpenter then wields one of the knives as a mirror while applying her lipstick, wanting to look her best before infiltrating her ex’s mansion with a machete. Trotting into the bedroom to find her ex and his new girlfriend sleeping (it reeks of the Betty Broderick narrative), Carpenter is unpleasantly surprised to find that the female body she starts to hack away at is filled with feathers instead of guts. Turns out, Ortega was waiting for her to show up and came prepared with a shotgun as her own weapon of choice.

    It’s here that the Death Becomes Her reference becomes clear, with Ortega—the Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) to Carpenter’s Helen Sharp—shooting a hole right through Carpenter’s stomach and sending her flying right over the balcony. When Ortega looks over it to see the resulting carnage, it becomes obvious that they’ve deviated from the original Death Becomes Her scene in opting to have Carpenter also land on two stakes in the white-picket fence that “padded” her fall. Carpenter might be down, but she’s not out, ready for instant revenge by lobbing a knife right into Ortega’s eye and flipping her the bird afterward.

    At the hospital where Carpenter manages to be outfitted with a pink “sexy” gown featuring white polka dots complemented by her thigh-high tights and heels, Ortega then comes for her revenge. And it’s here that the most obvious Tarantino tribute enters the fray, with Ortega dressed in the same nurse ensemble as Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), complete with a white eyepatch that has a red cross detail on it. Defibrillating Carpenter into oblivion, Ortega has hardly seen the last of her as she reappears at her ex’s house that night, watching them from outside as they get all romantique by the fire.

    Carpenter quickly puts a pin in those plans (voodoo doll pun intended) by pulling out a voodoo replica of Ortega and bending its body in the most cringeworthy ways. Laughing to herself as she bashes Ortega’s doll head against a bush, Carpenter is rudely interrupted by the sudden appearance of another doll Ortega happens to have—one that, quelle surprise, resembles Carpenter (mainly because it’s blonde). Thus, she tosses the doll into the fireplace, in turn, causing Carpenter’s body to burst into flames.

    Things continue to escalate when, in the next scene, Carpenter attacks Ortega while she’s in the shower with this mid white guy (played by Rohan Campbell), who’s mostly just a trophy for these two women (much like Ernest Menville [Bruce Willis] in Death Becomes Her) as opposed to someone they actually seem to care about all that much. Conveniently, Ortega happens to be packing a scythe while in the shower, hacking away at Carpenter’s arm before chasing her back down the stairs and tackling/wrestling her.

    Convinced she’s finally won this time, Ortega is shown blissfully kissing Mid White Guy as the lyrics, “Well, I heard you’re back together and if that’s true/You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you/If you want forever, I bet you do/Just know you’ll taste me too,” play in the background. Thus, it’s only right to hit that point over the head by having Mid White Guy turn into Carpenter while Ortega is in the midst of making out with him—fulfilling many a wet dream (though nothing will ever compare to the iconicness of the Madonna-Britney (and yes, Xtina) “union” at the 2003 VMAs), to be sure.

    While viewers might be titillated by the image, Ortega is anything but, whipping out a chainsaw to cut at Carpenter’s body anew, sending her backwards into the pool as she makes a bloody splash. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), it turns out to be a witchy trick on Carpenter’s part, as she then suddenly appears behind Ortega to watch Mid White Guy’s body sink to the bottom of the pool. It only takes a few seconds for Ortega to look “not that mad” about it.

    After all, this dude was so generic that all he can be referred to at the funeral is “Beloved Boyfriend.” And while the woman who must be his mother (hence, all the over-the-top sobbing) is noticeably upset about it, Ortega looks over at Carpenter with an almost grateful look in her eye as the two smile at one another and leave.

    For the final scene, Ortega and Carpenter are shown walking down some steps together sipping from either coffee or smoothie drinks (maybe Erewhon’s Short n’ Sweet smoothie?) as they kiki about “Beloved Boyfriend,” with Carpenter noting, “I mean, clingy. Lots of trauma, lots of trauma.” “Very insecure,” Ortega chimes in. Carpenter laughs, “’Very insecure!’ You kill me.” While it might not have the exact ending of Death Becomes Her (with Madeline and Helen opting to remain bitter frenemies rather than close besties), it does conclude with both of them at their ex’s funeral. And what better way to forge a lasting friendship than that?

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet Packs Some of Her Biggest n’ Bitterest Songs

    Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet Packs Some of Her Biggest n’ Bitterest Songs

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    Apart from Charli XCX and Chappell Roan, 2024 in music (much to Taylor Swift’s dismay) has belonged to Sabrina Carpenter. When “Espresso” first came out in April of 2024 (exactly one month before Carpenter’s twenty-fifth birthday), it didn’t take long for it to become a hit worthy of being deemed “song of the summer.” For yes, its pervasiveness only ramped up as the beginning of June rolled around and the single continued to take on a life of its own. The video’s summery aesthetic and color palette also contributed to its association with Lana Del Rey’s polar opposite emotion, summertime gladness. Frothy and catchy, “Espresso” was toppled from the number one spot only by Carpenter’s own subsequent single, “Please Please Please.”

    With both of these songs giving listeners a taste of the sound to come on Carpenter’s sixth—that’s right, sixth—album, it was apparent she was going in a different sonic direction from the one on 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send. At the same time, it was also clear she was maintaining the same penchant for tongue-in-cheek lyricism. Of the variety that’s only been honed during the past two years since she became an “overnight” success. And it all starts with “Taste,” a “Perfume”-by-Britney Spears-reminiscent number in that it warns another woman that Carpenter has marked her (now ex-) man, whether he knows it or not, with her own indelible scent—or rather, “taste.” As Carpenter phrases it in the chorus, “I heard you’re back together and if that’s true/You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you/If you want forever, I bet you do/Just know you’ll taste me too.” Whether Carpenter is referring to how his lips taste of hers or the ones she has “downstairs” depends on the listener’s level of raunch.

    Some have speculated the song could be directed at Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, but there’s also a tinge of “homage” to her love triangle drama with Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett during the bridge when she shrugs, “Every time you close your eyes/And feel his lips, you’re feelin’ mine/And every time you breathe his air/Just know I was already there/You can have him if you like/I’ve been there, done that once or twice/And singin’ ’bout it don’t mean I care/Yeah, I know I’ve been known to share.” Though, as a Taurus, probably not when it comes to food (and yes, “Taste” is arguably the most Taurus title for a song she could have come up with).

    Many of the lyrics also channel Rodrigo on Sour’s “deja vu,” albeit with a tone of more self-assured confidence. Like when Carpenter brags, “Hе’s funny, now all his jokes hit different/Guеss who he learned that from?” Trying out all the “tricks” he learned from Carpenter on this new girl, it smacks of Rodrigo accusing her own ex, “So when you gonna tell her/That we did that, too?/She thinks it’s special/But it’s all reused/That was our place, I found it first/I made the jokes you tell to her when she’s with you.”

    The tone shifts on “Please Please Please,” which offers a more country-infused sound (or “Dolly-coded” as people like to say) produced by Jack Antonoff—yes, Carpenter has officially joined that cult. And it works for her, clearly…what with “Please Please Please” marking her first number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song’s muse, as it were, also appears in the video directed by Bardia Zeinali. That’s right, Carpenter plays the reluctant Bonnie to Barry Keoghan’s Clyde. And after begging him, “Don’t embarrass me, motherfucker,” it seems that breakup rumors are swirling just in time for the release of Short n’ Sweet. But even if the rumors are true, the songs on the album make it evident that Carpenter is no stranger to disappointment in romance, no matter how brief.

    Indeed, like Matty Healy inspiring most of Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, Carpenter admits that it was some of her briefest relationships that left her feeling the most bereft once they were over. As she told Zane Lowe, “I thought about some of these relationships, how some of them were the shortest I’ve ever had and they affected me the most.” The same goes for Lana Del Rey with a bloke like Sean Larkin, who inspired many songs in the aftermath of their mere six-month relationship. But to discount the intensity of one’s feelings just because a period of time together is short (and hopefully sweet) is to promote the suppression of emotions that our capitalistic society thrives on. One in which people are encouraged to constantly move on to the “next” thing (or person) rather than dwelling too long in one place, so to speak.

    As for the place Carpenter dwelled while writing Short n’ Sweet, it would appear that the album cover ripping off a French photoshoot for Cosmopolitan France (starring model Tiffany Collier) might have been inspired by Carpenter hanging out in France for a couple of weeks while immersed in penning the record. Thus, perhaps Carpenter was feeling too French not to borrow her album artwork from une photo française—after all, she wrote many of the songs while on vacation in a small town called Chailland. Oui, oui, très inspirant.

    Once again giving her best impression of Ariana Grande (as she did for “Nonsense”) on “Good Graces” (particularly during the opening when she makes random noises), Carpenter warns the ephemeral object of her affection that she can switch up her mood real quick if he starts acting a fool, alchemizing her love into hate. This much is confirmed when she chirpily sings during the chorus, “Boy, it’s not that complicated/You should stay in my good graces/Or I’ll switch it up like that so fast/‘Cause no one’s more amazin’ (amazin’)/At turnin’ lovin’ into hatred.” To sum it up, like Ari, she can switch positions, too—only we’re talking about the emotional kind.

    Carpenter’s brand of innuendo is also on full display here, especially when she delivers the double entendre, “I’ll tell the world you finish your chores prematurely/Break my heart and I swear I’m movin’ on.” It’s that easy for someone who knows her worth, which is why it’s additionally easy to turn ice-cold in response to not getting what she wants out of a romantic interest, singing “I won’t give a fuck about you” in a manner similar to Reneé Rapp’s intonation when she flexes, “It’s not my fault you’re like in love with me” on “Not My Fault.”

    Having only just warmed up on the innuendo/double entendre front, Carpenter’s next offering is “Sharpest Tool.” And while the title might give the impression that Carpenter is going to be in impish “fast mode,” the song is actually a slowed-down melody (furnished, again, by Antonoff) that finds her reflecting on the fleeting relationship she had with a guy who wasn’t sharp enough (“not the sharpest tool in the shed,” if you will) to understand how much he hurt her—though maybe his other “tool” was sharp enough to keep her wanting more.

    So it is that Carpenter laments, “Guess I’ll waste another year on wonderin’ if/If that was casual [very Chappell Roan of her], then I’m an idiot/I’m lookin’ for an answer in between the lines.” Alas, more often than not, there are no answers when it comes to the whims of male emotions (or lack thereof). The casual cruelty of the person Carpenter describes is summed up in the lines, “We had sex, I met your best friends/Then a bird flies by and you forget.” Being easily distracted is, of course, a signature trait of dumbness (apologies to the ADHD crowd). Worse still, the erstwhile object of her affection was able to so effortlessly flip the switch on his “goodwill” toward her, with Carpenter recounting, “Seems like overnight, I’m just the bitch you hate now/We never talk it through/How you guilt-tripped me to open up to you/Then you logged out, leavin’ me dumbfounded.” Due to the nature of the lyrics, listeners have posited that Joshua Bassett seems to be the most likely inspiration. Or maybe, as the next track is called, it’s pure “Coincidence.”

    Exploring an inverse dynamic to the one in “Taste,” the guitar-laden, country-ified “Coincidence,” produced by John Ryan and Ian Kirkpatrick, is Carpenter’s “told you so” vindication about an ex who did her wrong with his own ex (again, it smacks of referring to Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello). In this regard, “Coincidence” shares some lyrical DNA with Mýa’s 2000 hit, “Case of the Ex,” during which she paints the picture, “It’s after midnight and she’s on your phone/Saying, ‘Come over,’ ‘cause she’s all alone/I could tell it was your ex by your tone/Why is she callin’ now after so long?/Now what is it that she wants?/Tell me, what is it that she needs?,” adding in the chorus, “Whatcha gon’ do when you can’t say no?/When the feelings start to show, boy, I really need to know and/How you gonna act?/How you gonna handle that?/Whatcha gon’ do when she wants you back?”

    Carpenter fears the same from the ex in question on “Coincidence,” annoyed by the “sixth sense” that ex has for infiltrating his life when she can sense he might have a new girlfriend. Hence, Carpenter giving us the snapshot, “Last week, you didn’t have any doubts/This week, you’re holding space for her tongue in your mouth/Now shе’s sendin’ you some pictures wеarin’ less and less/Tryna turn the past into the present tense, huh/Suckin’ up to all of your mutual friends.” Saving the coup de grâce for the bridge, Carpenter then wields her gift for sarcasm by saying, “What a surprise, your phone just died/Your car drove itself from L.A. to her thighs/Palm Springs looks nice, but who’s by your side?/Damn it, she looks kinda like the girl you outgrew/Least that’s what you said.” But, by now, Carpenter herself has outgrown this dude’s antics, moving on with the eye-rolling assessment, “What a coincidence/Oh, wow, you just broke up again” (while echoing the tone of Selena Gomez on 2017’s “Bad Liar”).

    The mid-tempo “Bed Chem” switches musical genre gears again, embodying a more funkified, R&B vibe as Carpenter dissects the definition of “good bed chem” (hint: it has little to do with a guy’s personality). Undoubtedly spurred by her dalliance with Keoghan, one line in particular stands out for alluding to his “size”—which everyone became privy to at the end of Saltburn. In reference to that, Carpenter sings, “And now the next thing I know, I’m like/Manifest that you’re oversized/I digress, got me scrollin’ like/Out of breath, got me goin’ like/Who’s the cute boy with the white jacket and the thick accent?” A white jacket being what Keoghan was wearing when the two first encountered at the Givenchy show during Paris Fashion Week. And, speaking of Givenchy, this track is also awash in the tone of the brand’s former spokesperson, Ariana Grande, known for her own sex-positive lyrical content as well (e.g., “everyday,” “side to side,” “positions” and “34+35”).  

    Carpenter, however, might just have managed to one-up even the most sexual of Grande’s lyrics with the verse, “Come right on me, I mean camaraderie/Said you’re not in my time zone, but you wanna be/Where art thou?/Why not uponeth me?/See it in my mind, let’s fu…fill the prophecy.” Like Dua Lipa on “Good In Bed” from Future Nostalgia, Carpenter makes it her mission to establish what creates unforgettable bed chemistry. Usually, it relates to being disconnected in every other way but the physical. Or, as Lipa phrases it, “I know it’s really bad, bad, bad, bad, bad/Messing with my head, head, head, head, head/We drive each other mad, mad, mad, mad, mad/But baby, that’s what makes us good in bed/Please, come take it out on me, me, me, me, me.” Or, even more directly, “Yeah, we don’t know how to talk/But damn, we know how to fuck.”

    As for the song that brings us to the second half of the album, “Espresso,” there’s little that can be said about it that hasn’t been already—not least of which is the expansive commentary on the polarizing neologism, “That’s that me espresso.” A phrase that some might find both “Dumb & Poetic,” as track eight on Short n’ Sweet is called. In fact, the title of the album has proven to be quite on-brand, with six of the twelve songs clocking in at under three minutes. And “Dumb & Poetic” happens to be the shortest of all at two minutes and thirteen seconds. But Carpenter says all she needs to in that time (occasionally channeling Chappell Roan’s “Coffee”), including, “Gold star for highbrow manipulation/And ‘love everyone’ is your favorite quotation/Try to come off like you’re soft and well-spoken/Jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen.” Though no one wants to hear the comparison right now, there is a faint tinge of Katy Perry’s “Ur So Gay” (minus the country twang) in the skewering tone designed to eviscerate this “man’s” false sense of masculinity. Which Carpenter knocks down completely with the final verse, “Don’t think you understand/Just ’cause you act like one doesn’t make you a man/Don’t think you understand/Just ’cause you leave like one doesn’t make you a man.”

    The musical tone switches up once more on “Slim Pickins,” another track noticeably produced by Antonoff, who Carpenter seems to keep on retainer for her most country-sounding fare (which bodes well for Lana Del Rey’s forthcoming Lasso). With its soft guitar background, Carpenter gives another great Dolly impression as she commences her tale of woe with resigned pluckiness: “Guess I’ll end this life alone I am not dramatic/These are just the thoughts that pass right through me/All the douchebags in my phone/Play ‘em like a slot machine/If they’re winnin’, I’m just losin’.” Once more alluding to the importance of a man’s size, Carpenter delivers another double entendre when she bemoans, “God knows that he isn’t livin’ large,” further adding, “A boy who’s nice, that breathes/I swear he’s nowhere to be seen.”

    As for the chorus, it’s among the most memorable on Short n’ Sweet, with Carpenter declaring, “It’s slim pickings/If I can’t have the one I love/I guess it’s you that I’ll be kissin’/Just to get my fixings/Since the good ones are deceased or taken/I’ll just keep on moanin’ and bitchin’.” Carpenter even offers up something for the grammar nazis (which is ironic considering her “Espresso” lyrics) by shading, “This boy doesn’t even know/The difference between ‘there,’ ‘their’ and ‘they are’/Yet he’s naked in my room.”

    She then goes ultra-country (we’re talking “make Miley jealous” level) for her finale verse, during which she assesses, “Since the good ones call their exes wasted/And since the Lord forgot my gay awakenin’ [surely, another nod to Chappell]/Then I’ll just be here in the kitchen/Servin’ up some moanin’ and bitchin’”—as most single white ladies are prone to do.

    As are they also prone to having a soft spot for Diablo Cody movies like Juno, which just so happens to be the title of the next song. And, in case there was any doubt as to whether it was about that specific movie, Carpenter sings, “If you love me right, then who knows?/I might let you make me Juno/You know I just might/Let you lock me down tonight.” Of course, Juno’s name was in honor of the goddess (called Hera in Greek) of women, marriage and childbirth, so it still holds that dual reference as well. Hardly the first “pop girlie” (that odious term) to use film as a song’s inspiration (Charli XCX and Lana Del Rey both have plenty of those), Carpenter does Cody proud when she also pronounces, “Hold me and explore me/I’m so fuckin’ horny.” After all, it’s Carpenter herself who said, “Those real moments where I’m just a twenty-five-year-old girl who’s super horny are as real as when I’m going through a heartbreak and I’m miserable.”

    Elsewhere, she serves Britney Spears’ “Perfume” yet again by urging her object of desire, “Mark your territory.” On “Perfume,” Spears is the one to assure, “I’m gonna mark my territory.” As any girl would when there’s a “whole package” involved—another dick innuendo Carpenter makes when she effuses, “Whole package, babe, I like the way you fit/God bless your dad’s genetics, mm, uh.” The Ariana Grande connection is also renewed when Carpenter teases, “You know I just might/Let you lock me down tonight/One of me is cute, but two though?/Give it to me, baby.” For it channels Grande on “34+35” when she gets to the point with, “You might think I’m crazy/The way I’ve been cravin’/If I put it quite plainly/Just gimme them babies.”

    Unfortunately, Carpenter has to endure the same path as Juno MacGuff in terms of being left heartbroken by the one she loves, as poetically explored on “Lie To Girls” (another Antonoff track). Capable of being as hard on herself as the boys who disappoint her, Carpenter opens with a verse featuring the lines, “I’ve never seen an ugly truth that I can’t bend/To something that looks better/I’m stupid, but I’m clever/Yeah, I can make a shitshow look a whole lot like forever and ever.” As can most women, when they want to. After all, love is blinding, in addition to blind. So it is that Carpenter crafts one of her most indelible choruses yet: “You don’t have to lie to girls/If they like you, they’ll just lie to themselves/Like you, they’ll just lie to themselves/You don’t have to lie to girls/If they like you, they’ll just lie to themselves/Don’t I know it better than anyone else?” And yes, this is Carpenter at her most Gracie Abrams-sounding (after all, there’s a reason Swift chose both women as her openers on The Eras Tour).

    None of this bodes well for Keoghan, but hey, who’s to say the two won’t get back together again, Bennifer-style (though we’ve all seen how that works out)? As for the arrival of whenever their “final” breakup might be, Carpenter is ready with an “anti-needlepoint” platitude, showcased in all its glory on the dreamy, 60s-inspired “Don’t Smile.” And it’s a one-eighty of a finale in terms of how Carpenter kicked off the record with the overly confident “Taste,” during which she promises her ex’s new “piece” that she’ll always be on his mind (and body)—the benchmark/gold standard for every girl that follows. On “Don’t Smile,” however, Carpenter doesn’t sound quite so self-assured as she chooses to challenge the cliché, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” Carpenter instead posits, “Don’t smile because it happened, baby/Cry because it’s over.” The former version of it is in keeping with that other false consolation, “It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” Something Ariana Grande repurposed for “thank u, next” by singing, “Say I’ve loved and I’ve lost/But that’s not what I see/So, look what I got/Look what you taught me.”

    Carpenter is much less “kumbaya” about the demise of love, admitting, “I want you to miss me, I want you to miss me/Oh, you’re supposed to think about me/Every time you hold her.” This, too, is another Olivia Rodrigo-esque moment, particularly when she tells her ex on “happier,” “I hope you’re happy/But not like how you were with me/I’m selfish, I know, I can’t let you go/So find someone great, but don’t find no one better.”

    The chill vibes of the song (both musically and tonally) belie the urgency of Carpenter’s need for her ex to continue pining away for her long after “the end.” Because, lest anyone forget, Carpenter already admitted on “Please Please Please” that ego plays a big part in the reason why women get so upset over breakups. So it is that she elucidates some of her coping mechanisms via the verse, “Pour my feelings in the microphone [more hyper-specific references to being a singer]/I stay in, and when the girls come home/I want one of them to take my phone/Take my phone and lose your number/I don’t wanna be tempted/Pick up when you wanna fall back in.” This, too, being a sexual double entendre for falling back in…to her vag.

    But Carpenter appears to have the last laugh if one goes by the bonus track edition of the album, which concludes with “Needless To Say,” a shade-throwing ditty that finds Carpenter coming on strong with her “subtle” takedowns. For example, “How’s the weather in your mother’s basement?” Always ready with a barbing quip, Carpenter wields some of her biggest n’ bitterest moments on Short n’ Sweet, for an effect that proves her pop prowess is hardly a flash in the pan. And perhaps that stems mostly from refusing to let others tell her what to do in the studio, with Carpenter informing The Guardian, “I’m very lucky that I don’t have people around me telling me what to do—I’m also a Taurus, so if they did, I’d probably get a little stubborn.”

    When then asked, “Is she a tyrant in the studio?,” Carpenter ripostes, “I’m a tyrant in life.” Indeed, many a dictator/political mastermind has been a Taurus. Luckily for music enthusiasts, Carpenter is nothing but a love dictator…who loves dick (to conclude in the spirit of a Carpenter outro).

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Chappell Roan’s Attempt to “Gen Z-ify” Fame By Setting “Healthy Boundaries” (Via the Shame Game)

    Chappell Roan’s Attempt to “Gen Z-ify” Fame By Setting “Healthy Boundaries” (Via the Shame Game)

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    While some might think that “Gen Z-ifying” fame refers to how virality through TikTok is the only way to become a “star” (with no staying power) nowadays, the truth is that Chappell Roan just summed up the true meaning of it on her own TikTok account. This by demanding that fans stop being, well, creepy. As though Roan has no concept that the parasocial relationship train can’t stop once it’s left the station. But then, what is one to expect from a novice to the scene? For, even more than being a parent, the phrase “there is no manual for blah blah blah” applies to fame and how one’s life immediately changes after it hits (just ask the “very demure, very mindful” bia). But it seems the aspect of celebrity that famous people consistently wish they could do without is the obsessive nature of fans, which has only grown more dangerous and disturbing in the digital age.

    For Roan, the obsession people have with her has already proven to be too much. And, even though she’s technically been in this business since 2015, when she first signed a deal with Atlantic Records, nothing prepared her for the sudden frenzy for all things Chappell as 2024 rolled around. She already addressed how overwhelming this newfound “icon status” has been for her, namely back in June during a Raleigh concert date, when Roan told the audience, “I just want to be honest with the crowd. I feel a little off today, because I think my career is going really fast and it’s hard to keep up. I’m just being honest, I’m having a hard time today.” Roan has also alluded to her disdain for fans that feel they should have constant access to her in an interview for The Comment Section with Drew Afualo, insisting that when she’s performing or giving an interview, she’s simply “clocked in” like anyone else with a “normal job” (which, again, is not what she has). When she’s offstage, however, Roan explained to Afualo, “Bitch, I’m not at work.” Thus, do not approach her as though she is.

    As for the massive crowds she’s been drawing in everywhere from Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza, in spite of how “ready for it” everyone seems to be for Roan to keep releasing new music, all signs seem to point to her “pumping the brakes” on the whole goddamn thing as a result of being so sketched out by the, let’s say, intensity of certain fans. Thus, she took to TikTok to say, “If you saw a random woman on the street, would you yell at her from the window?” Roan already sets herself up for failure with that question because, for many sober men and drunk people of all creeds, the answer is a resounding yes. She goes on, “Would you harass her in public? Would you go up to a random lady and say, ‘Can I get a photo with you?’ Would you be offended if she says no to your time because she has her own time? Would you stalk her family, would you follow her around? I’m a random bitch, you’re a random bitch.” Again, Roan sets herself up for all the holes in her “argument” for privacy to be easily poked through. Because, no, she is not a random bitch at all. She has achieved that thing that so many people wish they could: fame and acclaim. Ergo, becoming a public figure. A status that automatically changes the game in terms of what can be “done” to you.

    Concluding her tirade against creeps with, “Just think about that for a second. I don’t care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job, the career field I’ve chosen. That does not make it okay, that doesn’t make it normal… [a word that shouldn’t really be in an drag queen enthusiast’s vocabulary, but whatever]. I don’t give a fuck if you think it’s selfish of me to say no for a photo, or for your time, or to…for a hug. It’s weird how people think that you know a person just ‘cause you see them online or you listen to the art they make.” Here, too, Roan sets herself up for disaster because a key part of the reason that many fans do listen to this “art” is precisely because they feel like they know the person who made it. See something of themselves in that person and, therefore, feel connected.

    In the past, many musicians have only courted that perception, including the ultimate millennial pop star, Taylor Swift. Indeed, part of Swift’s longevity has been her acumen in cultivating parasocial relationships with fans. It can be argued, in fact, that fame wouldn’t really exist without this dynamic. At least not the kind of fame that constitutes being a global pop superstar. As for Roan continuing to insist that “it’s fucking weird” for people to glom onto a musician in such a way, she might need to be reminded that her entire shtick is centered around “weird” a.k.a. drag looks. And honestly, it’s no weirder than all of us being on some rock spinning around in the middle of space with absolutely no idea how we got here other than some unprovable postulations (including the “God theory”).

    Of course, Roan isn’t the only one who has expressed disdain for fan behavior in recent years. Take, for example, a video that made the rounds after the 2018 Met Gala, when Lana Del Rey (still in her “Bible” costume) was about to oblige a fan that asked for a selfie. When he tried to re-angle the phone she was holding to take the picture, she thrust it back and him and said, “You know what, fuck it” (though it sounded sort of like “fuck off” or “fuck you” as well). It speaks to what Roan said above about not “owing” anyone a photo. That a fan should be grateful to receive any such request fulfillment at all—not further annoy the famous person by trying to control how the selfie looks. By the same token, of course, there’s always the valid argument that fans are literally paying for how famous people live, so shouldn’t they be entitled to such things? And, if Roan wants to make analogies between famous people and regular people, it can be said that regular people’s bosses do pretty much the same thing, constantly infiltrating their lives outside of work because they pay for their existence, as it were.  

    Roan’s disgust with fan (or “stan”) behavior is, what’s more, in direct contrast to the “teachings” millennials have carried on from generations of famous people past. Case in point, during Paris Hilton’s 2020 documentary, This Is Paris, Kim Kardashian commented, “I think the best advice that she ever could’ve given me was just watching her.” Watching her constantly pose with fans whenever they asked for a photo, watching her being bombarded by paparazzi without ever lashing out, watching her personal life get violated in all the most invasive possible ways (Kim was obviously studying the sex tape aspect of that most closely). In the same documentary, Hilton admitted, “Even though it was so hectic and insane and just nonstop…I also loved the attention.” At least she can admit that. Roan, it seems, is struggling to acknowledge that attention is what she wanted for so long, only to be met with the “be careful what you wish for” caveat.

    And yet, in an interview for Q with Tom Power, Roan made a prescient remark, saying, “This industry, like, you really flourish if you don’t protect yourself.” Power clarifies, “You flourish if you don’t protect yourself?” “Mhmm, yes” she replies sagely. “Like if you don’t look after yourself you can have a pretty good, amazing career. You’ve seen that kind of thing happen?” “We’ve all seen that kind of thing happen.” (To be sure, there’s no example more textbook than Britney Spears.) In the same interview, Roan goes on to say that touring is her favorite part of the job, even though one would think that might be the ripest scenario for witnessing the apex of “creep behavior” among fans. But “creepy,” like everything else, means different things to different people. While one fan might believe it’s perfectly normal to throw their mother’s ashes onstage, another might simply want to become “iconic” in their own right by engaging with a certain opening lyric in a viral way. In effect, the shades of creep in fandoms are multi-hued and numerous, and certainly can’t be contained by a mere “read” from an honorary drag queen/Midwest princess.

    To boot, there are some who would still posit that the “dark side of fame” is but a small price to pay for all the benefits that go with it, not least of which is avoiding, more than “normals,” an overpowering sense of insignificance. Hell, look at Kevin Bacon’s recent comment on how terrible it was to not be famous for a day, stating, “Nobody recognized me. People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.’” Perhaps Roan ought to try out his experiment as well.

    This isn’t an “asking for it” type of logic that men try so often to use on women for how they dress in terms of saying that those who want to be entertainers should know what they’re getting into. That they “asked for it” when they made the Faustian pact. But it is reminding those Gen Z famous ones, like Roan, who expect to set up “healthy boundaries” for such an uncontrollable entity that doing so is impossible without stepping out of the spotlight altogether. Something Josh Hartnett, a fellow Midwest “prince” (from Minnesota), recently addressed in an interview with The Guardian, recalling of his white-hot moment as Hollywood’s most sought-after heartthrob, “People’s attention to me at the time was borderline unhealthy… There were incidents. People showed up at my house. People that were stalking me… a guy showed up at one of my premieres with a gun, claiming to be my father. He ended up in prison. There were lots of things. It was a weird time. And I wasn’t going to be grist for the mill.” That word again: “weird.” As in: celebrity is fucking weird. Which is why some people are built for it, and some people aren’t. In the years (or maybe just months) ahead, the audience will soon find out if Roan is.

    Who knows? Maybe her ire for “fandom” is a passing fancy. After all, she’s not the first famous person to comment on her gross fans. Take, for example, Madonna’s resurfaced 1991 interview in The Washington Post, during which she unabashedly declares, “I don’t mind when people come up to me in a restaurant and go, ‘God, I think you’re great.’ I love that. It’s the obsessive fanatics whose attention seems very hostile. It’s beyond admiration. It’s very crazy…” That might sound “Gen Z” enough to go along with Roan’s sentiments, but M gave away her boomer nature when she added, “It’s always fat people too. They are the most unattractive social outcasts, like really overweight girls or guys with lots of acne that follow me around and pester me. It’s frightening because not only are they bothering me, but they’re horrible to look at too.”

    At the same time, Madonna and Roan have more in common than some might think, not just because of their “slow burn” first albums taking a full year to catch on, but also because Madonna hails from the heart of the Midwest as well. Which is exactly why she also pronounced, “It’s a very boring, humdrum place. I was raised in that world. I know the ignorance that they wallow in—and that they prefer to live in—because it’s easier for them. I’m just trying to pull all their Band-Aids off.” Roan might be trying to do the same with fans who think “creepy behavior” is acceptable/par for the course, but one doubts it will effect the kind of change that vogueing did (i.e., gay-ifying the straights without them realizing it).

    Fame is one thing that can’t be Gen Z-ified, unless it becomes something else altogether. And if it did, that would likely only make it all the more “democratized.” So what’s really the point of wanting to be famous at all if everyone gets treated the same? Like the “random bitch” Roan claims she wants to be treated as.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Charli XCX Doing A Skims Ad Campaign Is More Crash Than Brat

    Charli XCX Doing A Skims Ad Campaign Is More Crash Than Brat

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    During one of her many interviews about Brat, Charli XCX mentioned being committed to whatever “character”/“persona” she’s trying on for her album of the moment. (Though it bears mentioning that no one could ever be as committed as Marina and the Diamonds playing Electra Heart for the album of the same name back in 2012.) Admitting that, to her, this aspect of it is more interesting that the music itself. But it seems that, in capitulating to becoming a “Skims model” (a term that somehow feels and sounds derisive probably because it inherently is), she’s having a bit of whiplash in terms of recalling just who, exactly, she’s supposed to be embodying for the (brat) summer of 2024, instead reverting more freely to her Crash persona from 2022. The one that “took every advertising deal” (including, most glaringly, the one with Samsung) without the slightest bit of shame or hesitation because, hey, this was her “sellout” era. Whoring herself out for [insert company name here] and gleefully taking the money in return was, accordingly, completely “on-brand.”

    Kim Kardashian, needless to say, has been in the “whoring herself out” era ever since the days of sticking her head up Paris Hilton’s asshole and keeping it in there until she could come out with a slightly more famous face than before. Funnily enough, Kardashian herself does exemplify a brat in the more conventional sense of the word (along with the children she’s “raising”). That is, minus the part where she’s not a little girl anymore—though it’s no secret that most millennial women, particularly those in the limelight, still can’t help but act that way (see also: Paris Hilton and Lana Del Rey). And yes, what was brattier than Kim screaming, “My diamond earring!” after losing a stud reportedly worth seventy-five thousand dollars while swimming in Bora Bora circa 2011? Her melodramatic delivery and traditional brat reaction was, thus, the polar opposite of being “very demure, very mindful.”

    As is XCX choosing to pose for Skims’ cotton “underthings.” Regardless of trying to make it more “Brat coded” by having Petra Collins do the photoshoot and “tongue-in-cheekly” captioning it “#ad” (in keeping with the dry, straightforward labeling of things in the Brat world). A caption that essentially “Brat-ifies” Crash behavior. In any case, maybe some part of Kardashian (aside from the part that jumps on every bandwagon to capitalize as much as possible for both more money and clout) tapped XCX for the campaign because she saw a “kindred” in the literal meaning of “brat” as opposed to XCX’s modern twist on the concept, which essentially means being messy (e.g., wearing the same makeup for days at a time), not trying too hard and being, in effect, too cool to care.

    Thus, posing for a Skims ad, however “no frills,” feels very much the opposite of Brat. As though XCX can’t help but return, ever so slightly, to the girl she was on Crash. The unapologetic sellout that could collect the cash without judgment because that’s simply the name of the game when you’re an Ultra-Famous Pop Star. Such an unapologetic sellout could also effortlessly get into bed with Kim Kardashian and her odious Skims brand without thinking twice about it. In point of fact, Crash’s last song (on the standard edition) is called “Twice,” a track featuring the lyrics, “Don’t, don’t, don’t think twice/Don’t think about it.” Although she might have been referring to the end of the world/mortality (it was sort of like her more upbeat version of Billie Eilish’s “Everybody Dies”), in this instance, it can easily apply to the idea of not thinking twice about becoming one of Kardashian’s growing list of shills. Much to Taylor Swift’s increasing dismay, as she seems to be losing all the “cool” girls to the former Mrs. West and her flesh-toned shapewear. Even her own “good friend,” Lana Del Rey, who also blithely donned the coquette look in time for Skims’ Valentine’s Day 2024 ad campaign. Resultantly, there were rumors of a fallout between Swift and Del Rey after the latter showed up to the Met Gala with a cinched-waist-to-the-max Kardashian.

    As for Charli XCX, despite knowing she “couldn’t even be her if she tried” (a lyric from Brat’s “Sympathy is a knife,” which features some heavy allusions to Swift), the Crash album was her biggest attempt at being “that pop star bitch.” You know, the kind with Swiftian-level juggernaut powers. While, at the same time, also being her biggest troll of the music industry. The entire concept, after all, was centered on the “Faustian pact” nature of becoming a star (Maxxxine also comes to mind on that front). And, if anyone knows all about such Faustian pacts, it’s surely Kim Kardashian. So perhaps this “deal with the devil” connection also played a role in XCX’s “attraction” to the “girl with no talent.”

    Or maybe XCX simply wanted to look “hot in it” (to quote one of her songs), donning a see-through white cotton bra that miraculously shows no sign of any nipples (let alone hard ones) and matching white cotton boxers while flashing what has become her signature “dead-eyed” look. Though one has to wonder if that expression is “ironic” anymore, so much as a sign that she played the part of Crash corporate sellout for so long that it’s now bled into the Brat era. XCX even had the audacity to declare, “SKIMS empowers people to feel confident in their own skin, which is the essence of Brat. I am excited to be working with a brand that understands that comfort and style don’t need to be compromised.” Aside from Charli sounding like a marketing robot/recently converted cult member, it has to be said that what obviously does need to be compromised, at this juncture, in order to be “brat” is artistic integrity.

    After Crash came out, XCX declared, “I needed to switch after Crash—I wasn’t born to do radio liners. That’s not who I am at all.” But if Brat is (or was) meant to be something of its polar opposite/a return to her “fringe club days,” an ad with Skims certainly doesn’t align with that narrative. But, then again, perhaps the corporate-ification of Brat (complete with Kamala Harris joining in on the meme trend for her presidential campaign) is causing a rightfully schizophrenic reaction on Charli’s part.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Not Exactly Dying Over Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile”

    Not Exactly Dying Over Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile”

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    In keeping with the motif of the world’s inevitable apocalypse (at the rate things are going), Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars have seen fit to release a song befitting of such a foregone conclusion. Called “Die With A Smile,” the track is a mawkish love song that finds each singer professing that, “If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you” (too bad the single wasn’t out when Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was released in 2012—you know, the year the world really ended). It would be sweet if it wasn’t so utterly depressing. Not just because it seems to take the world “ending” for people to fully understand what they mean to one another, but because, more and more, people seem to be surrendering to the world’s end (for humans, anyway) rather than doing anything that might combat it (like, say, ceasing to support businesses such as Shein).

    Nor does anyone appear to want to combat the “trend” of country taking hold of 2024. For, in what marks yet another instance of the music industry “going country” (as Lana Del Rey decreed earlier this year), the accompanying video, co-directed by Daniel Ramos and Bruno Mars, finds the duo attired in Western wear. While the song itself isn’t exactly country apart from its Patsy Cline-esque sentiments, the aesthetic borrows heavily from the genre, right down to stylizing the video as a “performance” on a 1960s-looking variety show. Sort of like what Lily Allen already did in 2009’s “Not Fair” video (granted, “Not Fair” had a much twangier musical sound to warrant having a country theme for its visual).

    Here, too, Gaga and Mars sing as though before a live studio audience (though there’s no audience to be seen), with Mars opening the track by painting the picture, “I, I just woke up from a dream/Where you and I had to say goodbye/And I don’t know what it all means/But since I survived, I realized/Wherever you go, that’s where I’ll follow.” That last line, of course, is a familiar one, said (in some variation or another) in everything from Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him” to The Calling’s “Wherever You Will Go.”

    As for whether or not this is “Bruno Mars’” song or “Lady Gaga’s” song (with both rumored to have new albums coming out imminently) depends on who the listener is a fan of. On the one hand, Lady Gaga gets top billing with her name put before Mars’, but, on the other, Mars sings the majority of the verses. Not only that, but he’s standing front and center with the microphone in the video, while Gaga sits off to the side on her piano, looking like Natasha Lyonne (complete with a stoic expression) with a cigarette protruding from her mouth.

    To boot (no cowboy pun intended), Gaga never gets to sing any of the verses without Mars. In some ways, though, it actually does feel more like a Gaga endeavor, not just tone-wise and in terms of Gaga constantly flip-flopping her musical styles with each new “era,” but also based on the single’s release date. For it’s on-brand that Lady G would choose to sanction a new song being put out on Madonna’s birthday, August 16th—though that might not necessarily be a good omen for her (especially as it’s Madonna’s “Satan year”). It’s almost as dick swinging as Britney Spears sporting an updated version of her Versace butterfly dress after Blake Lively wore the original version to the It Ends With Us movie premiere.

    In any case, Gaga only deigns to get up from her piano during the guitar breakdown of the song toward the three-minute mark, swaying to and fro as she parades the full extent of her very obvious wig styled into a beehive—and yes, the overall effect, cigarette and all, makes one remember why Gaga chose to dye her hair blonde in the early days of her career: so as to avoid comparisons to Amy Winehouse.

    Indeed, apart from still harboring makeup-inspired traces of Harley Quinn (being fresh off her Joker: Folie à Deux stint), Gaga majorly channels Winehouse’s (not Dolly Parton’s) look in this video (perhaps the next time another biopic is made, she can be the one to occupy the lead role—for it couldn’t be any worse than Back to Black). Unfortunately, the channeling only comes from a visual standpoint. For, although the song is all about yearning and burning for a loved one (but only in the event of an apocalyptic situation, mind you), it doesn’t convey even one iota of the same emotions expressed in any Winehouse song.

    In fact, Winehouse was unapologetic about genuinely wearing her heart on her sleeve when it came to the lyrics she wrote, famously stating, “So much music nowadays is so like, ‘You don’t know me, I don’t need you’ and all the music then [in the 60s] was kinda like, ‘I don’t care if you don’t love me. I will lie down in the road, pull my heart out and show it to you.’ You know what I mean?” Clearly, many musicians of the moment do not. This extends not just to Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga, but also the often ersatz emotionalism of, say, Taylor Swift. Then there is the penchant for outright froth from the likes of Miley Cyrus, Sabrina Carpenter and, oy vey, Katy Perry (currently trying to stage a very catastrophic “comeback”). Things on the rap/hip hop front aren’t much better of late either, with both Megan Thee Stallion and Ice Spice continuing to promote “money is the anthem” messages with the highest degree of grotesqueness.

    In effect, when a musician does say something that at least sounds meaningful in a song, it’s very easy for listeners to be taken in by it. To practically swoon over it. Which is precisely what seems to be happening with “Die With A Smile.” Especially with the maudlin chorus, “If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you/If the party was over/And our time on Earth was through/I’d wanna hold you just for a while/And die with a smile/If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you.” While it might come across as romantic to some, to others, it simply reads like it would take a cataclysm to treat someone with the sort of effusive romanticness they deserve every day. Not just with the threat of imminent death. So no, not exactly “dying” over “Die With A Smile.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Bebe Rexha Serves 00s Paparazzi Vibes and Shady Record Execs for “I’m The Drama” Video

    Bebe Rexha Serves 00s Paparazzi Vibes and Shady Record Execs for “I’m The Drama” Video

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    At the beginning of July this year, Bebe Rexha tweeted, “I could bring down a BIG chunk of this industry. I AM frustrated. I Have been UNDERMINED. I’ve been so quiet for the longest time. I haven’t seen the signs even though people constantly are bringing them up and they have been SO OBVIOUS. And when I have spoken up I’ve been silence[d] and PUNISHED by this industry. Things must change or I’m telling ALL of my truths. The good the bad and the ugly.” The release of “I’m The Drama” feels in line with that pronouncement, as Rexha makes a heavy-handed allusion to the ways in which she’s been mistreated throughout her tenure in the music business by singing, “There’s a silence only I/I was born to break.”

    Alas, Rexha has yet to go into full detail about what, exactly, has happened to her. When asked by a fan on Twitter (again, it’s not “X”), “What stops you from speaking? Do it! We are with you,” Rexha ominously replied, “THEY PUNISH YOU.” On the heels of releasing two other singles, “Chase It” and “My Oh My” (with Kylie Minogue and Tove Lo) this year, it seems as though Rexha is primed to release a fourth album, therefore doesn’t totally want to rock the boat when it comes to blowing the lid off the abuse she’s suffered. Particularly since Better Mistakes and Bebe didn’t perform as well on the charts as they should have (though her 2018 debut, Expectations, was certified platinum and managed to climb to number thirteen on the Billboard 200 album chart upon its release).

    But that doesn’t mean that more “subtle” digs can’t be made at the industry, with the Jak Payne-directed video for “I’m The Drama” channeling Britney Spears in the 00s (think: the video for 2007’s “Piece of Me”). Particularly as it opens on Rexha surrounded by a sea of paparazzi, herself serving as the eye of the storm while wearing oversized black sunglasses (a very Brat emblem these days), a fur-trim coat and hair that’s dyed with black stripes to contrast against the overall blonde tresses.

    In another intercut scene, Rexha appears to be at a venue that looks like a wedding reception (or any generic after-party, really) as she stands in the center of it all wearing a black floor-length gown (which is also her steez in the “My Oh My” video). She then dives into the chorus with an intonation that sounds decidedly mantra-y as she chants, “I’m the drama, I’m the face/I make heads turn in this place/And they lining up, and they lining up/And they lining up for a taste/I’m the drum set, I’m the bass/A goddamn filthy disgrace/And they lining up, and they lining up/And they lining up for a taste.” While this might be what constitutes that majority of the song’s lyrics, the infectious backbeat produced by Jimmy James and Punctual is what sustains it as an undeniable earworm rather than coming across as overly repetitive.

    When she deviates from the chorus to announce, “When I walk in, feel your eyes/Oh, and they call my name,” the scene then switches to her sitting at the head of a table in what looks like a quintessential record label office (further emphasized by the framed records hung up on the wall) filled with executives in suits who don’t have an artistic bone in their body. Thus, it comes across as particularly pointed that she repeats the line, “There’s a silence only I/I was born to break” in this room, as though to none too abstrusely indicate who/what she’s talking about: the music industry “powers that be.” For, like Britney Spears, it seems there is so much more going on behind the scenes with Rexha’s oppression than fans and casual enthusiasts alike could ever fathom, with Rexha herself fueling the flames of that “conspiracy theory” fire by saying, as mentioned, “Things must change or I’m telling ALL of my truths. The good the bad and the ugly.” It sounds a lot like Kesha warning Dr. Luke in 2017’s “Praying,” “And we both know all the truth I could tell.” (Uncoincidentally, Rexha promoted her fangirl love for Kesha by posting a story on her Instagram where she’s singing the lyrics to her first independently-released single, “Joy Ride,” and captioning it, “KESHA YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO SLAY SO HARD WITH THIS ONE.”)

    Rexha might just be reaching her breaking point in that truth-telling regard, as “I’m The Drama” pronounces both lyrically and visually. Unlike, say, Taylor Swift, who “self-effacingly” admits, “It’s me, hi/I’m the problem, it’s me” on 2022’s “Anti-Hero,” Rexha isn’t saying she’s the problem when she declares, “I’m the drama, I’m the drama/They lining up for a taste,” so much as riffing on what Britney said when she goaded, “You want a piece of me?/I’m Mrs. ‘Extra! Extra! This just in’/You want a piece of me?/I’m Mrs. ‘She’s too big, now she’s too thin’/You want a piece of me?/Piece of me.” Of course, Britney’s paparazzi-plagued 00s aura isn’t the only element of the aughts Rexha is serving throughout the “I’m The Drama” video—there’s also some major Lindsay Lohan in “Rumors” vibes (including the occasionally-reminiscent-of-the-“Rumors”-video color palette and the assaulting paparazzi visuals Rexha brings back from the 00s).

    To further explain the message behind her song, Rexha stated, “I just wanted to create something people could relate to. The drama in it captures those moments where you feel like all the eyes are on you, whether good or bad. It’s embracing that and making something so empowering about it.” Just as Britney tried to do time and time again before they turned her into America’s fucked-up voodoo doll. Hopefully, the same won’t happen to Rexha, though, the way this year has been going for her (see: the hate crime in Munich incident), it would be understandable if she had a full-on Britney-with-the-shaved-head-and-umbrella moment.

    In the meantime though, Rexha’s fans would probably like to believe she’ll do as she does at the end of “I’m The Drama” and simply spray a bottle of champagne among the crowd to celebrate her many instances of overcoming adversity in a business that still seeks to chew women up and spit them out like more grist for the mill.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna’s Satan Year

    Madonna’s Satan Year

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    It seems fitting that this is the year Madonna turns sixty-six—her “Satan year,” as it were. After all, satanic panic is chic again, what with the Christian vote that Donald Trump is trying to “appeal to” in this election, along with the release of Longlegs, a movie where Nicolas Cage plays a Satan-worshipping serial killer, and Maxxxine, a movie that revives satanic serial killer Richard Ramirez as part of the narrative. Madonna herself has, needless to say, always been rooted in religion. Not just because of her name, but her expectedly Catholic upbringing. Accordingly, Madonna had an early sense of what it was to be terrified by the fire and brimstone rhetoric of the Bible.

    And yet, that didn’t stop her from defiantly going against it. Starting from an early age, Madonna saw that rebellious acts—usually of a sexually provocative nature—were what got her the attention she was so sorely lacking in a household of seven other brothers and sisters, two of which arrived soon after Madonna’s father, Silvio, remarried in the wake of Madonna Sr.’s death in 1963.

    With the influence of Catholicism so deeply ingrained within her, it’s no wonder that those themes of good versus evil crept so frequently into her work. And yes, many would come to view Madonna herself as “satanic.” As she put it during a 1996 interview promoting Evita, “Many people see Eva Perón as either a saint or the incarnation of Satan. That means I can definitely identify with her.”

    Over the years, Madonna would come to be known for doing many “devilish” things. Below are some of her most memorable brushes with being “damnable,” though there are many other instances in between, particularly depending on who you ask.

    ***

    1984, “Like A Virgin” performance at the First Annual MTV VMAs: This was the “devilish” controversy that launched Madonna’s reputation for scandal in the first place. Although she would later state that the whole thing was an accident and she was just trying to make the best of a bad situation after her shoe came off, the result was immortally iconic (even if the excuse sounds like more typical Madonna lore). As she stated in 2015 of that performance and its “shock value” on the public, “Everyone’s showing their butt now, but back then, nobody saw anyone’s butt.” So, for the first of many times, Madonna was left no choice but to light the way with her “heathenism.”  

    1985, Playboy and Penthouse publishing Madonna’s pre-fame nude photos: Staying on-brand for what would become Madonna’s enduring sense of controversy, her next major one after the VMAs was a matter of “vintage” nude photos. Specifically, ones that were taken during her starving artist days in New York. It was Lee Friedlander and Martin H.M. Schreiber who sold one set of photos to Playboy, and Bill Stone who sold another to Penthouse. The expected result in Reagan’s “moral majority” America was outrage and consternation. That is, until Madonna did what no woman before her had tried: not caring. Indeed, just a year earlier, Vanessa Williams was forced to relinquish her Miss America crown (after becoming the first multiracial contestant to win) after her own pre-fame nude photos were sold to Penthouse. But rather than following suit by kowtowing to the moral outrage, Madonna hit back with two words, “So what?” And with that, shaming women was never quite as satisfying to the patriarchy that was quaking in their boots over this “Jezebel.”

    1986, “Papa Don’t Preach” song/“Open Your Heart” video: Even after becoming a married woman (albeit to as much of a wild child [in his own way], Sean Penn), Madonna hardly fell into the role of “staid wife.” In 1986, she continued to evolve her political form of pop stardom by releasing her third album, True Blue. The instant classic of a record featured two singles that would serve as Madonna’s “antichrist” bread and butter: “Papa Don’t Preach” and “Open Your Heart.” With the former, the controversy stemmed more from the lyrics themselves than the accompanying video wherein Danny Aiello played Madonna’s Tony Ciccone-inspired father. With the latter, it was Madonna’s unbridled presentation of androgyny, homosexuality, “pedophilia” and general sexual perversity that had the proverbial censors up in arms (MTV even tried to suggest “edits,” as though they had never met Madonna before).

    Directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino (who Madonna would also turn to again for some scandal with 1990’s “Justify My Love” video), “Open Your Heart” remains one of M’s most famous career visuals, presenting her as a peep show star in a black bustier with gold tassels. Though the bustier has a conical bra, it was actually designed by Marlene Stewart, not Jean-Paul Gaultier, who would furnish Madonna’s cone bra era during the Blond Ambition Tour. And while some might think that’s what got the then thirteen-year-old boy in the video (played by Felix Howard) all “titillated,” the fact of the matter is that he simply wants to emulate Madonna, mimicking her dance moves and looking longingly at the photo of her outside the venue (topped off by a giant cutout of Tamara de Lempicka’s “Andromeda” painting). Indeed, the most controversial aspect of all about “Open Your Heart” is Madonna very clearly acknowledging that gay men are probably more Single White Female-prone than actual women.

    1989, “Like A Prayer” music video and its timing with the Pepsi commercial: In a move that has continued to endure as one of her most controversial, Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” video was conveniently-timed, in terms of upping the “scandal quotient,” to be released around the exact same time as her Pepsi commercial premiered. Already paid five million dollars for the joy of her presence, Madonna naturally kept the cash after Pepsi decided to pull the plug as a result of her then too blasphemous “Like A Prayer” video, directed by Mary Lambert (who had also previously directed Madonna’s “Borderline,” “Like A Virgin,” “Material Girl” and “La Isla Bonita” videos). The most offending imagery to “Middle America” (a catch-all term for any part of the U.S. beyond San Francisco-New York-Los Angeles)? Madonna getting sexual with a Black saint in between dancing in front of some burning crosses. Oh yeah, and her stigmata hands indicating her “Christ-like” nature. It was all too much for Pepsi to deal with, as the company was threatened with boycotts and general moral outrage. So yes, long before Lil Nas X’s “Montero” video, there was Madonna causing a religious commotion with “Like A Prayer.”

    1990, “Like A Virgin” performance during Blond Ambition Tour: Although some might have thought “Like A Virgin” could never be as risqué as it was during the 1984 VMAs, Madonna challenged herself on that front in 1990. While she could have bypassed the song altogether (already, by that point, rather sick of it) for the Blond Ambition Tour, Madonna chose to up the ante on the sexually charged nature of the song by performing it on a red velvet bed. “Boudoir antics” indeed. As if it weren’t enough to have Luis Camacho and Jose Gutierez making lurid gestures while standing on either side of her in their own special cone bras, Madonna offered the pièce de résistance of the performance by “simulating masturbation” at the very end of the raunchy rendition—just before her voice for the opening of “Like A Prayer” asks, “God?” As though to indicate that perhaps the divine really does exist in the form of orgasm. Police in Toronto didn’t seem to agree, famously threatening to arrest her if she went through with the performance as usual during her dates at the SkyDome. Madonna was undeterred, with her adamance about doing the show as usual being humorously documented in Truth or Dare. In the end, the police didn’t have the cojones (or a viable reason) to arrest the biggest star in the world.

    1990, “Justify My Love” video: Continuing to test the limits of what boundaries she could push in the early 90s, Madonna’s next major scandal arrived thanks to yet another video collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Mondino: “Justify My Love.” In 2013, Madonna would say that it was her favorite video to make, and not without good reason. After all, what could be more fun than renting out the entire top floor of a posh Parisian hotel and being told there are “no rules,” for the cast of characters in the video to do whatever and act however they wanted? Usually, in a sexy manner.

    Although Madonna had toed the line between socially acceptable and too taboo before, “Justify My Love” ended up marking the first time that MTV put a kibosh on her freedom of expression, insisting the video was too racy to be aired. Some would go on to say that Madonna got the video to be banned by design, so that it would cause more controversy, therefore more publicity. Plus, it prompted her to sell it as a video single, after which it became the first short-form video to go multiplatinum in the U.S. After all, people needed to see what was so scandalous about the content, and how else were they going to if MTV wasn’t airing it?

    Madonna even found time to make a political commentary on Nightline about the whole thing, schooling Forrest Sawyer on the hypocrisy of America and how it would rather let children and teenagers watch gratuitous violence than be exposed to anything sexual. Least of all anything “too” sexually taboo (which, at that time, included bisexuality and sadomasochism) or anything where a woman is not being exploited or violated within a sexual scenario.

    1990, “The Beast Within” B-side: As though to drive home the point that she has no problem being associated with “hellfire” and that religion did a number on her thinking as a child, Madonna opted to read select passages from the Book of Revelation as the lyrics for a remixed version of “Justify My Love” called “The Beast Within.” Among her “eternal damnation” selections for the lyrics are, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer/Behold the devil is about to throw you into prison” and “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted/As for the murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolators/And all liars/Their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone/And he said to me/He said to me, ‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy’/For the time is near/Let the evildoers still do evil/And the filthy still be filthy.” According to many people throughout Madonna’s career, she falls into the latter category.

    And yet, she is arguably among the most well-read when it comes to the Bible, telling her musical director, Stuart Price, in 2005’s I’m Going To Tell You A Secret, “There is some poetry in the New Testament.” She also explains, via voiceover, “To me, ‘the beast’ is the modern world that we live in, the material world, the physical world, the world of illusion that we think is real. We live for it, we’re enslaved by it and it will ultimately be our undoing,” then saying aloud to Price, “I like the juxtaposition of telling people they’re all gonna go to hell if they don’t, um, turn away from their wicked behavior” (for “The Beast Within” would serve as the opening song to the Re-Invention Tour, also showing up during The Girlie Show and The Celebration Tour in an interlude format). Again, it’s ironic when taking into account that so many of M’s detractors have felt she’s the one who needs to turn away from her wicked behavior.

    1992-1993, Erotica/Sex/Body of Evidence/The Girlie Show: It was also Forrest Sawyer who said, during the intro to the abovementioned Nightline episode, “It’s become virtually a seasonal affair. The weather changes, and there is a new Madonna controversy.” In 1992, Madonna proved that in spades by unleashing a quartet of projects that, when absorbed together by the public, reinforced, once and for all, her reputation as a “satanic presence” in America. It began with releasing Erotica and Sex back-to-back, with the former, er, coming out on October 20, 1992 (back when albums were still released on Tuesdays), and the latter on October 21, 1992. The two were thusly received as “twin” projects. Viewed as “more of the same” from Madonna, whose only goal, in the public’s mind, was to shock and appall rather than saying something that was actually meaningful. But of course her intent was always to hold up a mirror the U.S. and its false declarations about being the place for freedom of speech and open dialogue. Though at least it never really claimed to be sexually liberated.

    The music of Erotica was quickly lost in the scantily clad shuffle of the Sex book, which sold 500,000 copies in its first week and topped The New York Times Best Seller list for three weeks. As Madonna would later remark of the book, “[It] was sort of the pinnacle of me challenging people and saying, ‘You know what? I’m gonna be sexually provocative and I’m gonna be ironic and I’m gonna prove that I can get everybody’s attention and that everybody’s gonna be interested in it and still be freaked out by it.’” That they were, especially the conservatives of American government that were still enjoying power thanks to the Bush administration (ultimately just a continuation of the Reagan one).

    While others might have “toned it down” in response to the backlash, Madonna kept releasing content of a highly sexual nature, including the Uli Edel-directed Body of Evidence, released on January 15, 1993. Indeed, it was no coincidence that Body of Evidence should be released during such a “dead” month for new movies. But even that didn’t help it win at the box office, with its worldwide gross being $38 million to the $30 million budget it cost to make the movie in the first place. Madonna’s performance was, quelle surprise, the most panned thing about BoE.

    And yet, because you can’t keep a good woman down (no matter how much everyone insists she’s Satan), Madonna kept on truckin’ in 1993, taking her sex act on the road with The Girlie Show. However, in a sign of just how fraught her relationship with the United States was at the time, Madonna opted to only perform tour dates in New York, Philadelphia and Auburn Hills (just outside of Detroit, proving Madonna’s ongoing commitment to her Michigan roots). Though she claimed the general bypassing of the U.S. was because “I am going to the places where I have the most enemies,” there could be no denying that the majority of those “enemies” were in the “Land of the Free.”

    1994, saying “fuck” fourteen times on the Late Show with David Letterman: The Girlie Show’s final date was on December 19, 1993 in Tokyo. This meant that, on March 31, 1994, Madonna didn’t exactly have any new projects to promote when she went on The Tonight Show with Davide Letterman. Other than, of course, her “demonic agenda.” Infecting the minds of Americans with her “filth,” etc. And, in this instance, it was her filthy mouth that did viewers in. Though, to be fair, Madonna is the woman who once said, “I hate polite conversation. I hate it when people stand around and go, ‘Hi, how are you?’ I hate words that don’t have any reason or meaning.” “Fuck,” in Madonna’s mind, is not one of those words, having already told audiences during the Blond Ambition Tour, “Fuck is not a bad word, fuck is a good word. Fuck is the reason I am here…fuck is the reason you are here.” For Letterman and the rest of America that night in 1994, fuck also became the reason they were there.

    In the wake of the “fuck scandal,” Madonna would send Dave a letter in mid-April cheekily saying, “Happy Fucking Birthday Dave! glad you could get so much mileage out of the fucking show. Next time you need some fucking publicity, just give me a fucking call. love the anti-christ M. xx.” Ah, there’s that allusion to being demonic again, with Madonna knowing full well the public’s perception of her, particularly during this period in her career…

    1996, playing Eva Perón in Evita: It was precisely because her image had become a “liability” by the mid-90s that Madonna, some might cynically say, “orchestrated” her next image shift. The one that would soon lead to her being rebranded as the “Ethereal Girl.” It started in 1994, with the release of Bedtime Stories, an R&B-infused record with plenty of slow jams including the beloved final track, “Take A Bow.” While Madonna might have “softened” her image with Bedtime Stories and a follow-up compilation of ballads called Something to Remember in 1995, not everyone was sold on her continuing to “soften” that image through the persona of Eva Perón. Not just because many people (specifically, Argentinians) don’t exactly have “pleasant” thoughts about Perón, but because, as Madonna put it, “Many people see [her] as either a saint or the incarnation of Satan. That means I can definitely identify with her.”

    As such, Madonna had been petitioning director Alan Parker for the role since at least the “Take A Bow” video (helmed by Michael Haussman), which amounted to an audition tape for the part Madonna said she had been dreaming of playing since the late 80s, when she first secured meetings with Robert Stigwood (the original producer of the Broadway musical), Oliver Stone (then signed on to direct the film version) and Andrew Lloyd Webber himself. Alas, Madonna appeared to rub Stone the wrong way, with the director recalling, “At the time she hadn’t done many movies, and she was insisting on script approval. I said, ‘Madonna, you can’t have script approval.’ And she wanted to rewrite Andrew Lloyd Webber! Here she was making these demands, and I said, ‘Look, there’s no point in our meeting anymore; it’s not going to work.’” Needless to say, Madonna had the last laugh. Even though many Argentinians were still less than thrilled about Madonna playing their precious Evita, with one former secretary of Evita’s reportedly saying, “We want Madonna dead or alive. If she does not leave I will kill her.” But Madonna doesn’t “leave,” least of all because she’s been given a death threat.

    2001, “What It Feels Like For A Girl” video: With the advent of the twenty-first century, Madonna decided to try her hand at marriage again. And Guy Ritchie was quick to mold Madonna in his laddish image after the two were married in December of 2000. It took little time for the two to collaborate on M’s video for “What It Feels Like For A Girl” in 2001. Something of an ironic song choice when taking into account the misogynistic nature of Ritchie’s work. To be sure, there’s no denying a fair amount of gay and female fans alike might have felt betrayed by Madonna’s decision to marry someone who so overtly represented everything she didn’t. Including ageism, “light-heartedly” represented in “What It Feels Like For A Girl” as Madonna takes a joy ride with an elderly woman that she picks up from the “Ol Kuntz Guest Home.” While Ritchie might have meant “no harm” with such a phrase, it would become particularly poignant as the ageism lobbed against Madonna continued to augment as the 00s wore on. But that term was hardly what offended MTV enough to, yet again, ban Madonna. This time, for something she was entirely unaccustomed to being banned for: the portrayal of violence and abuse. Of course, it probably would have been totally acceptable if Madonna were a man engaging in these behaviors.

    2003, “American Life” video/“Die Another Day” video: As has been noted repeatedly, the most shocking thing about the “American Life” video was Madonna’s decision, ultimately, to censor it. Although she had originally intended to go through with the “X-rated” version that shows George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein lookalikes at the end, the invasion of Iraq changed her mind. In one of the original versions, however, it shows Madonna throwing a grenade into a fashion show audience, with Bush catching it only to end up using it as a means to light his cigar. In another version (of which there are many), a Saddam lookalike lights the cigar for Bush. All of which is to say that these two men are ultimately in one big boys’ club together. A club that happens to run the world on violence and destruction.

    The theme of torture was on-brand for the early aughts, what with Guantánamo Bay opening in January of 2002. Which also happened to be the year that Madonna released the video for “Die Another Day,” a visual that might have been “controversy-free” were it not for Madonna’s rampant use of Hebrew words and wrapping a tefillin around her arm at the end of the video. The tefillin being, in Orthodox Jewish communities, solely reserved for men—and certainly not designed to be paraded in relation to a pop song. But leave it to Madonna to subvert religious paraphernalia whenever and wherever possible…

    2003, kissing Britney and Christina (but mainly Britney) at the VMAs: For some, the “queerbaiting shtick” of Madonna kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera during the 2003 VMAs hasn’t necessarily stood the test of time. But even if one feels that it was all done solely for “shock value” (rather than a symbolic “passing the baton,” as Madonna suggested at the time), it can’t be denied that it was a bold move to test out on the mainstream during a period when conservatism ruled over America yet again (courtesy of one, George W. Bush and his puppeteer, Dick Cheney). And a lesbianic kiss, in 2003, was just the ticket to momentarily shock the U.S. out of its puritanical coma.

    2004, Re-Invention Tour: Just because Madonna had become “the missus,” it didn’t mean she was prone to “tame” her act, particularly since it became apparent fairly early on in the marriage that Madonna couldn’t (and wouldn’t) stop being an artist just to appease Ritchie’s retro ideals of what a wife “ought to be.” Nor was she wont to tamp down her rampant allusions to Kabbalah and religion in general throughout the tour, making political statements that were often uncomfortable for those concertgoers who foolishly expected her to “shut up and play the hits.” But even during what constituted her first “greatest hits” tour, Madonna would never do that.

    2009, Michael Jackson tribute speech at the VMAs: It’s not often that someone can be controversial for their projection of narcissism, but Madonna managed to achieve that during the 2009 VMAs, when she was tasked with giving a tribute speech to her contemporary, Michael Jackson. Although, in the past, Jackson had often expressed his disdain for Madonna, it didn’t stop her from blithely making comparisons between her and the fellow pop royal, opening the speech with, “Michael Jackson was born in August 1958. so was I. Michael Jackson grew up in the suburbs of the Midwest. So did I. Michael Jackson had eight brothers and sisters. So do I.” Of course, that brief “running off course” from the subject at hand would pale in comparison to her eventual Aretha “tribute” speech…

    2012, The MDNA Tour: Letting it all hang out during her post-divorce-from-Ritchie era, Madonna went balls to the wall with her controversy-courting during The MDNA Tour. From placing a swastika over Marine Le Pen’s head during the “Nobody Knows Me” interlude to toting firearms during “Gang Bang” (even more controversial when she still performed with the guns after the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting) to “promoting homosexual propaganda” during her Russian concerts, every step of the way during The MDNA Tour was beset with the old line about Madonna being a devil woman.

    2014-15, calling the Rebel Heart leak “terrorism,” Rebel Heart social media snafus: Rebel Heart, Madonna’s thirteenth studio album, was plagued with difficulties from the start. For, in addition to working with more producers than she ever had before (even during Bedtime Stories), early demos of the songs were illegally hacked and leaked online, forcing Madonna to release six songs way ahead of schedule, in addition to bumping up the album’s release date before she was ready. As a result, the album’s concept was altered in a way that prevented Madonna from more fully representing the duality of the “rebel” side and the “heart” side. So yes, she was in a bit of a fragile state when she likened the hack to “terrorism,” particularly at a time when the Sydney hostage crisis and Peshawar school massacre had just occurred. Madonna would also further ruffle feathers by likening the violation to “rape,” a word that fewer and fewer were comfortable with throwing around lightly. Indeed, one woman who didn’t let use of that word go was Vanessa Grigoriadis, who, in her “Madonna at Sixty” profile, commented, “It didn’t feel right to explain that women these days were trying not to use that word metaphorically.” In response, Madonna clapped back, “[That article] makes me feel raped. And yes I’m allowed to use that analogy having been raped at the age of nineteen.”

    Of course, worse than anything was Madonna’s “promo campaign” during the Rebel Heart rollout. The one that found her using images of Black men that included Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Bob Marley with the same black wires wrapped around their face as the ones featured on Madonna’s album cover. Not only did people feel it was in “poor taste” for Madonna to use such freedom fighting icons as a means to promote her music, but they also pointed out the fact that putting Black men in what amounted to chains was really not a good look for a white woman.

    2017, announcing that she “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House”: This remains one of Madonna’s riskier moves in the past ten years, perhaps underestimating just how much the America she came of age in is no longer one that values or upholds the tenets of so-called free speech at all. To boot, in the time since Madonna rose to stardom, the world’s sense of humor has only become more nonexistent as a result of how literally everyone takes things. Madonna tried to break it down for those offended by saying, “I spoke in metaphor and I shared two ways of looking at things—one was to be hopeful, and one was to feel anger and outrage, which I have personally felt.” Alas, you can’t explain language to people who bastardize it as much as the 1984 government.

    2018, Aretha Franklin tribute speech at the VMAs: Falling prey to a more rambling speech than the one she gave after Michael Jackson’s death, Madonna made matters worse for herself at the 2018 VMAs by showing up in highly appropriative garb traditionally worn by Amazigh women. Having freshly stepped off the plane after her sixtieth birthday party in Morocco, Madonna didn’t seem to remember what planet she had reentered when she proceeded to give a long-winded “early days in New York” story before finally tying it back to Aretha with one sentence at the end of the speech. The Aretha fans were not happy.

    2019, shrimping Maluma in the “Medellín” video: After Madonna took a four-year pause from making another studio album (usually the longest she would ever go, up until now, with five years already passing between 2024 and the release of Madame X), it was the music and mood of Lisbon that inspired her next one. Madame X would become, arguably, Madonna’s most eclectic album to date, with a wide range of sounds, musicians, voices and instrument styles permeating the record. One such example being Maluma’s presence on the album’s lead single, “Medellín.” Maluma ended up being approached about a collaboration at the 2018 VMAs (so, not a total loss for Madonna) and the two quickly struck up a rapport that would last well after finishing their collaboration. Indeed, so “warm” were their feelings toward one another that Madonna even felt obliged to suck Maluma’s toe during their “bed scene” together in the video. After all, this is the woman who famously promoted shrimping on the back cover of her Erotica album.  

    2020, quarantine diaries and hydroxychloroquine post: Among the least sexual of her controversies, there was a period throughout 2020 where Madonna would provide little “snapshots” into her quarantined existence, billing these Instagram videos as her “quarantine diaries.” While some could appreciate the campiness of the content and production, others took offense to Madonna saying things like, “Covid is the great equalizer.” This said from a posh bathtub filled with rose petals.

    To make matters worse, in terms of Madonna coming across as tone deaf and uninformed about Covid, she posted a highly controversial video that promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine as means of curing coronavirus. In other words, she was touting the same remedy as Donald Trump. It definitely wasn’t her finest hour vis-à-vis types of controversy.

    2021, VMAs introduction: Not one to let the next generation forget that she will forever remain the queen of “baring it all” at any age, Madonna showed up to the VMAs in 2021 to give a nod to the fortieth anniversary of the network, telling the audience, “And they said we wouldn’t last. But we’re still here, motherfuckers” before turning around to flash her ass for the camera, 2015 Grammys-style. As usual, Madonna’s exposure of her “illicit” body part got the tongue-wagging reaction she wanted.

    2023, introducing Sam Smith and Kim Petras at the Grammys: Less desirable for Madonna on the tongue-wagging reaction front was her appearance at the 2023 Grammys. Tapped to introduce Sam Smith and Kim Petras performing “Unholy” (which she would also incorporate into the opening of “Like A Prayer” during The Celebration Tour), few were focused on the words Madonna was actually saying as much as they were her face. Of course, it wasn’t the first time comments had been made about her plastic surgery-happy visage, but this backlash over her appearance was among the most merciless to date. So tireless was the commentary about Madonna being “unrecognizable” that it prompted a barrage of think pieces on the subject, including “Madonna’s Face and the Myth of Aging Gracefully.” But if “graceful” means “covering it up” and surrendering to “acting your age,” then, obviously, it’s not for Madonna.

    2024, “daring” to still bare her skin/be sexual during The Celebration Tour: Speaking of not covering it up, while some were likely hoping that Madonna would “stay down” once she was felled by a bacterial infection in the summer of 2023, she got right back up again to parade her body for The Celebration Tour. Unlike the Re-Invention Tour, this was her first all-out, fully admitted greatest hits tour, celebrating a forty-year career that few others, least of all any female pop stars, have rivaled. Continuing to explore her old favorite themes, religion, sexuality and double standards for women, Madonna also incorporated many nostalgic touches into the show, reflecting on her past in a way she never had before, and certainly not during a tour. Of course, for those who might believe that it was a sign of Madonna “slowing down” or “accepting her fate with the reaper,” they have another thing coming. For this “devil woman” isn’t liable to ever stop.

    ***

    Madonna once remarked, “We live in a very puritanical country.” Something she’s seen time and time again in her decade-spanning career. And while it might have seemed that such puritanism was at its peak in the Reagan 80s, it’s no secret that the United States, at its core, has not fundamentally changed with regard to its attitudes about sex and sexually empowered women. As a result, it’s no wonder that Madonna has been branded as “the devil” repeatedly throughout her various “eras.” But at least, by turning sixty-six, she can finally give conservatives “the mark of the beast” to match that accusation.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Blake Lively Shows Where Her Millennial-Oriented Loyalties Are By Donning A Signature Britney Dress, Britney Swings Her Dick in Response

    Blake Lively Shows Where Her Millennial-Oriented Loyalties Are By Donning A Signature Britney Dress, Britney Swings Her Dick in Response

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    Even if Ryan Reynolds insisted upon wielding NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” (and its signature choreo) as the song for the opening scene of Deadpool and Wolverine, Blake Lively (a.k.a. Mrs. Reynolds) has seen fit to remind people that her millennial-oriented loyalties are forever with Britney Spears. Even when she “lightly” shades Lively for pulling an Ambular in Clueless by “going through her laundry.” Indeed, lately, and at their own peril, millennial women have taken a shine to paying major homage to one, Miss Spears.

    It started earlier this summer with Halsey releasing what amounted to a bad cover version of Spears’ 2000 hit, “Lucky.” Although Halsey assured fans that she, of course, got Spears’ permission to use the song and “pay homage” to it with an accompanying video, Spears posted a rather unfavorable take on the single by saying, “For obvious reasons I’m very upset about the Halsey video. I feel harassed, violated and bullied. I didn’t know an artist like her and someone I looked up to and admired would illustrate me in such an ignorant way by tailoring me as a superficial pop star with no heart or concern at all. I have my own health problems which is why I took down my IG account yesterday. I will definitely be putting it back up to show I CARE. I’m speaking with my lawyers today to see what can be done on this matter. It feels illegal and downright cruel.”

    Soon after, the post was deleted and replaced by Spears’ insistence that the condemnation was merely “fake news !!! That was not me on my phone !!! I love Halsey and that’s why I deleted it 🌹 !!!” Whether or not Spears’ phone was possessed by another person or another one of Spears’ personalities is at one’s discretion. However, based on this other recent “emotional flare-up” on Spears’ part, it appears as though she may very well have been the true culprit behind the Halsey shade. This based on the fact that, after Blake Lively showed up to the August 6th premiere of It Ends With Us wearing the Versace butterfly dress that Spears famously sported in 2002, Spears felt obliged to respond “indirectly” by, days later, posting a video of herself wearing a riff on the same dress (albeit shorter and differently cut) with the caption, “UPDATED VERSION OF MY 2002 VERSACE DRESS 👗 !!! I LIKE IT WAY BETTER. SHOWS MY LEGS !!! 💅🏻👗🌷🌷.” She then included the post-script, “I’m no @blakelively but I like it.”

    Of course, while some might try to insist Spears meant “no shade,” her dick-swinging behavior of late was on-brand for her post-conservatorship, no-fucks-given vibe. (Besides that, why choose to make mention of the same dress and assert her dominance over it at the exact moment after Lively chose to wear it?) In point of fact, Spears has come a long way from being self-effacing and unwilling to take credit for all that she’s done for and contributed to music and pop culture, suddenly suffering no fools when it comes to “tributes.” Regardless of how effusive they might be. This even includes Lively’s gushing Instagram story post directed at Spears upon donning the dress: “Today’s mood. The ultimate queen who made us all want to sparkle and write and share our stories. Britney, us millennials all have a story of a moment, or of years that you made us want to shine and inspire awe, with strength, and joy and immensely hard work. Thank you for your example and your contribution to women telling their stories. So excited about your biopic and all you have to come.” Naturally, this sort of “love letter” to another “stronger than yesterday” woman is befitting of somebody who is known, apparently, as a “crown straightener” a.k.a. “a woman going around straightening all the women’s crowns around her.”

    At the premiere itself, Lively continued to rave, “It’s Britney’s actual dress. It should be in the Smithsonian or the Met [instead, it was available via Tab Vintage]. But it’s on me. I feel so lucky.” Ah, that word—which also serves as the song title that Halsey recently “borrowed.” So yes, it would appear that the fellow millennial women showing Spears so much love of late aren’t exactly getting it in return in quite the same maudlin way, with Lively also noting at the premiere, “This dress meant so much to me because of what she meant to me.” Maybe, in this case, Spears was offended by use of the past tense, with Lively continuing, “Like, she was just somebody who represented, like, love and beauty and youth and hard work and determination and strength, and she was in touch with her sexuality and her delicacy and she just sort of represented it all.” To which one must ask: then what does she represent in the present tense?

    During what some would like to call her “heyday” (a generally off-putting word used to signify that one’s prime is over), Spears wore the dress to Versace’s presentation of the 2003 women’s spring/summer collection in October of 2002, shortly after her very public breakup with Justin Timberlake—the one that, as she described it, turned her from a pop princess into a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy.” This stated in her memoir The Woman In Me. A book that also takes pause to mention what the Versace butterfly dress and the trip to Milan that year meant to her, with Spears stating, “That trip invigorated me—it reminded me that there was still fun to be had in the world. That party was really the first thing I did to put myself out there after the breakup with Justin—on my own, innocent.” A far cry from her declaration of being “not that innocent” in 2000. In any case, perhaps Lively choosing to home in on that particular aspect of her sartorial iconography felt, somehow, like an invasion of what the form-fitting gown signified to her: a newfound liberty—emerging from a chrysalis after being imprisoned in bubblegum pop/Timberlake land.

    At the It Ends With Us premiere, Lively also mentioned, “When this dress was available I was like, ‘Yes, I need it!’ I’ve had it for almost a year now and I’ve been saving it for this.” Not just because one of Spears’ songs appears on the soundtrack, but because it does have a certain “floral-themed” quality to it that correlates with Lively’s flower shop-owning character, Lily Bloom. And while a few might question the relevance of the movie using Spears’ 2003 single, “Everytime,” during the ending credits of the film (performed, instead, by Ethel Cain), any millennial girl can tell you that the song was aimed at Timberlake. At the time when their relationship reigned supreme in the hearts and minds of America, the aftermath of that relationship proved just how, that’s right, toxic (to name another Britney single) the dynamic actually was. Much the same as Lily and Ryle’s (Justin Baldoni) in the movie. Or Lively and Justin Baldoni’s behind the scenes of making it.

    In any event, like Halsey, Lively wasn’t deterred from continuing to express her love for Spears even after the “misunderstanding,” “hearting” Spears’ post about the updated version of her dress (the caption, in typical Spears style, was later deleted). A supportive move (in the wake of having cold water dumped on her enthusiasm) that was almost as uncaring and unbothered as Halsey saying, after Spears (or her “handler”) publicly declaring her disdain for “Lucky” 2.0, “I love Britney!!!! I always have and always will[,] you were the first person who ever made me realize what it means to feel inspired. And you continue to inspire me every day.”

    Because, no matter what Spears tries to do to deter her original millennial fanbase, there is, evidently, no behavior she can engage in that would ever turn them away from her often uncouth responses to their expressions of love. Besides, when you’ve got a territorial dick to swing, you’ve got to swing it.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Kylie, Bebe and Tove Offer Up A Stately Experience for the “My Oh My” Video

    Kylie, Bebe and Tove Offer Up A Stately Experience for the “My Oh My” Video

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    For those who thought Kylie Minogue, Bebe Rexha and Tove Lo might leave the imagery for the “My Oh My” single solely at their performance together for BST Hyde Park earlier this summer, the trio hasn’t disappointed, bringing fans a right proper video directed by Charlie Di Placido. Despite the director’s Italian last name, the trio has kept it strictly British by opting to film the stately visual accompaniment to the song at Syon House in Brentford.

    The West London residence, inhabited by the Duke of Northumberland, appeared to have no qualms about the “Saltburn effect” on the estate. Not, as some naysayers might suggest, because they don’t have faith in the song’s ability to “catch on” (even though it should be way more revered than it currently is), but because the mansion has already been a long-standing haven for filming anyway (most recently, Bridgerton counted itself among other British-oriented pop culture staples, such as Gosford Park and Belgravia, taken with the charm of the mansion). Besides, if Guy Ritchie’s The Gentleman taught people anything, it’s that dukes and other “lowlier-than-a-prince” title holders are always strapped for liquid cash, burdened by the inconvenience of their only valuable assets being in the form of property. So why not make a fast pound off said property (in a way that doesn’t involve the manufacture of cannabis)? Especially for a video like this.   

    Opening with Minogue positioned on a marble “bed” (like some sort of Greek goddess) in front of the famous Apollo Belvedere sculpture, an entourage of dancers surrounds her, all momentarily in “frozen” pose” before they start moving their arms and then their torsos to indicate they’re hardly just more statues who also happen to be at Minogue’s side. As a matter of fact, the dancers stand out not only for their signature movements, but because they’re all dressed in different costumes, which is usually something unheard of in most music videos.

    As the song bursts out into the chorus, Di Placido cuts to Minogue and the dancers in another part of the mansion dancing and serving catwalk energy before Rexha’s moment to shine arrives. She, too, is given her own regal “entrance” opportunity, framed by Di Placido with her arm resting against an elaborate column in yet another decadent room. Outfitted in a black evening gown with a plunging neckline and a slit at the thigh (in contrast to Minogue’s more Grecian gold number), Rexha preens for the camera—almost as though to mimic her version of what one of these statues in the palatial residence might do if they actually came to life—while delivering her verse. The one that goes, “Rush of hands, lingering looks/My name in your mouth, that was all it took/Now, yesterday’s light years away/You came in here, now, there’s no goin’ back.” She then adds, “When you asked, ‘What’s your name? Let me know’/I’m Bebe, I’m a Virgo/‘What’s your drink? Let me buy’/You had me when you said, ‘Hi’/Hi.”

    The zodiac-centric content of the song might have led some listeners to believe there would be more Gemini/Virgo/Scorpio tropes and/or symbols at play, but, instead, Di Placido places each singer within one of the artful and poetic settings of Syon House. While Minogue gets the most time situated within the various iconic rooms of the space (namely, the conservatory), her presence is actually the most memorable because of the way in which the dancers that encircle her synchronize their choreography while simultaneously managing to look entirely unique and separate from one another.

    Though perhaps not as unique as Tove Lo, whose entrance into the fray of this musical narrative is more special than Rexha’s or even Minogue’s. To introduce her part of the song, one of the dancers walks from a hallway and into a room next to a staircase where Tove is perched nearby on a pedestal, her hairstyle courtesy of a brown (and crimped!) Lady Godiva-length wig that complements her own riff on Greek goddess-chic.

    “Striking a pose” (yes, Madonna-style) like the women who came before her in this video, Tove “unfreezes” soon enough to relish her own spotlight—working the staircase as she flexes with her Scorpio-touting verse. The trio then converges upon one another in the same room where Minogue initially started out, the Apollo Belvedere sculpture now standing over all three of them.

    The dancers, meanwhile, continue to strut around them before this scene becomes intercut with one of Minogue (sans her two “backup singers”) standing/dancing in a massive hallway where a long line of dancers flanks her on either side. This is the image that concludes the video, with Minogue “breaking character” after a few “frozen pose” seconds to bop around wildly, laughing at herself as she does so.

    All in all, it signals that Duchess Minogue and her “ladies in waiting” would be perfectly at home on a regular basis in this imperial abode. The Duke of Northumberland, therefore, might want to change his locks. My oh my, indeed.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Trap’s Greatest Horror Is Being Confined to a Stadium of Teen and Tween Girls Worshiping the Same Taylor Swift-esque Pop Star

    Trap’s Greatest Horror Is Being Confined to a Stadium of Teen and Tween Girls Worshiping the Same Taylor Swift-esque Pop Star

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    Perhaps the thing that comes to mind as the most blatantly unbelievable—and, to be sure, there are many to choose from—in Trap is the idea that a Taylor Swift-esque pop star would ever use her powers for true (rather than ultimately performative) good. M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie (the sixteenth one he’s directed, to be precise), however, would like to posit just that. The woman playing such a pop star is none other than Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka (not to be confused with his other daughter, Ishana, whose movie, The Watchers, he recently produced). Indeed, the Trap Soundtrack serves as her second full-length album, albeit under the moniker of “Lady Raven,” with generically-titled songs like “Don’t Wanna Be Yours” and “Dreamer Girl” performed during the concert that serves as the primary backdrop for most of the film’s narrative. And yes, said concert is very clearly meant to mirror (or troll, as it were) The Eras Tour, not to mention the ilk that it attracts.

    In point of fact, Shyamalan supposedly pitched the idea as: “What if The Silence of The Lambs happened at a Taylor Swift concert?” Well, for a start, it’s a major insult to The Silence of the Lambs to compare Trap to it in any way, shape or form (where film releases of 2024 are concerned, that luxury is reserved solely for Longlegs). And, secondly, the musical style of Lady Raven is far too R&B-infused (circa the 00s) to be comparable to Swift’s typically vanilla stylings. Though one thing that is comparable between the two women is their costume choices, often awash in flowy, ethereal dresses. But, as is the case with Swift, it doesn’t really seem to matter what Lady Raven wears. To her adoring, devout fans, she can do and don no wrong. With that in mind, at one point in the movie, our “anti-hero” (read: murdering psychopath) Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett), an “all-American dad” who works as a firefighter, remarks to a “spotter” at the concert (played by Shyamalan, who likes to pull Hitchcock-inspired cameos in his own movies) that Lady Raven has a cult-like power over the mostly tween and teenage girls who worship her—that they would listen to anything she said.

    Such a specific way of phrasing something is, of course, foreshadowing for the way in which Lady Raven will turn out to be the primary key in apprehending Cooper a.k.a. The Butcher (a serial killer nickname almost as unoriginal as Trap itself). Even though she’s already done enough on that front—certainly above and beyond what any ordinary “mega star” would do—by allowing the FBI to wield her concert date in Philadelphia as a trap for The Butcher. Who, for whatever reason, left behind a remnant of a receipt in one of his safe houses indicating that he would be at the Lady Raven show.

    The profiler heading up the investigation, Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills, who was cast literally only because she was in The Parent Trap—get it?), is, in truth, more out of her depth than she realizes once Cooper catches wind of the concert being a full-on sting operation (taking inspiration from the 1985 sting known as Operation Flagship). For, unsurprisingly, a psychopath of this level is fully capable of playing the part-time role of “family man” when he’s not out…butchering people. Hence, being the “dutiful dad” for the night by taking his twelve-year-old daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to see Lady Raven. Almost as socially awkward and gawky as the Riley of Inside Out, her obsession with Lady Raven is basically the only thing that’s getting her through her ongoing painful ostracism by a group of girls who she once considered her friends.

    Although Cooper tries his best to be “sympathetic” to Riley’s sensitivity to this often teen girl-specific plight, not only does he overtly find the concert and its audience annoying, but his attention is more than somewhat divided by the fact that he keeps noticing police officers escorting away random men at the show. Per Dr. Grant’s statistics, only three thousand men are in attendance among the twenty-thousand-plus crowd of women. On that note, the idea that such concerts, particularly The Eras Tour, are so often viewed as one of the few “safe spaces” where women can “just dance” and unapologetically exist precisely because of how repelled by such music/representations of femininity men are, has become a thing of the past. It first became one at its grandest scale in 2017, with Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman Tour in Manchester.

    Then, it almost happened again at The Eras Tour itself, with the botched attempt at another terrorist attack in Vienna designed to kill as many female acolytes of Swift’s as possible. As one concertgoer put it in the aftermath of Swift’s subsequently cancelled Vienna dates, “There’s a feeling of inclusivity at her concerts. There are, after all, not many spaces in the world where women can go and have a drink and a dance and feel safe. It’s mainly women, children and gay men at her concerts. And now, you can no longer guarantee.”

    Lady Raven’s concert, “little did they know,” also presents just such a case of an infiltrated “last bastion” where younger girls and women alike can “feel safe,” unburdened by the fear of a psychologically wounded man’s wrath (and yes, the two-dimensional Cooper character is slapped with cliché mother issues out of the Hitchcock playbook). A concept that is, in reality, the ultimate impossibility, particularly in the United States. What’s more, despite the “hope” presented by a female candidate currently running for president (with infinitely better chances of winning than Hillary Clinton in 2016), the backlash that will inevitably result if she does win is bound to be rooted in radically enacted male chauvinism.

    And so, women in power or not, in an evermore (no Taylor pun intended) misogynistic society, to present, as a horror premise, being trapped in a stadium full of tween and teenage girls screaming and mindlessly mimicking the dance moves and lyrics of their favorite generic pop star, well, it doesn’t exactly do much to bolster the overall female reputation (that Taylor pun intended).

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Darkness Surrounding Taylor Swift of Late

    The Darkness Surrounding Taylor Swift of Late

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    As the news of Taylor Swift’s three canceled dates in Vienna over an elaborate terrorist plot make the rounds, it seems a general “dark pall” has been cast over the singer of late. It started earlier in the year, with the “conspiracy theory” (a.k.a. totally plausible hypothesis) that every time another female pop star has a chance of making it to number one on the charts, Swift chooses that week to release a new iteration of The Tortured Poets Department. Which is why there are now thirty-plus variants of the album. Yet another reason many people felt that Billie Eilish was shading Swift specifically when she told Billboard, “We live in this day and age where, for some reason, it’s very important to some artists to make all sorts of different vinyl and packaging… which ups the sales and ups the numbers and gets them more money.” The shade was felt whether Eilish intended it or not because everyone knows that Swift is the “queen” of doing this.

    Eilish also remarked, “I can’t even express to you how wasteful it is. It is right in front of our faces and people are just getting away with it left and right…” While Eilish was sure to say “some artists,” it was difficult for many readers, Swifties included, not to automatically think of Taylor’s album release methods. Or tactics, if you prefer. And yes, she weaponized them just in time for Eilish’s release of Hit Me Hard and Soft, her third record. Alas, it was blocked out of the top spot thanks to the three variants of TTPD that Swift unleashed the same day, May 17th. This precise “phenomenon” (and hardly what Chappell Roan would call a “femininomenon”) also happened when Charli XCX released Brat (after which the world was never the same).

    A week after the album might have slid into the top slot on the UK charts, Swift conveniently decided to release six—that’s right, six—TTPD album variants that were exclusive to the UK. The geotargeting on this front felt especially calculated (to use that word Swift hates being called), and totally merited XCX writing a song called “Sympathy is a knife,” suspected to be about Swift specifically because of the lyric, “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show/Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick.” This being a reference to the brief period when Swift was “canoodling” with The 1975’s Matty Healy, for which XCX’s fiancé, George Daniel, is the drummer. There were other “nods” to being made to feel insecure by Swift throughout the song, including the part of the chorus that goes, “‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried/I’m opposite, I’m on the other side.”

    Charli fans were “moved” enough by the track and its supposed muse to start chanting, “Taylor is dead” at a show of hers in São Paulo on June 22nd. When XCX was informed of the “mantra,” she spoke out on social media, saying, “Can the people who do this please stop. Online or at my shows. It is the opposite of what I want and it disturbs me that anyone would think there is room for this in this community.” So yes, that’s just the first piece of the kind of darkness that’s been following Swift lately, this “varietal” ostensibly of her own making. To be sure, this aspect of said darkness is rooted in her competitive nature and insatiable drive to “succeed”—or, as Lana Del Rey put it earlier this year, “She’s told me so many times that she wants it more than anyone.”

    That much was made clear early on in her career, not just in her willingness to take a bum deal with Big Machine Records, but even in the mention, during an 00s-era interview, of why she decided to play a twelve-string guitar instead of a six-string one. The reason, as she told the interviewer, in the country twang she was then putting on, “I had this one real jerk of a teacher… he goes, ‘There’s no way that you’ll be able to play a twelve-string guitar at your age and your fingers aren’t developed enough and there’s no way you’d be able to play it.’ …So I got that twelve-string guitar and I would play it every day until my fingers bled, and, you know, at first it seemed really hard, and then I just realized that if I put my mind to something, then it was really mind over matter.” This seeming to be her ongoing philosophy for “winning” at the charts. Yet even her continued “domination” in numbers hasn’t fooled “the culture,” with The Guardian publishing an article titled, “Taylor Swift may have captured the charts, but Charli XCX captured the zeitgeist” the same week Swift blocked XCX from the number one spot.

    However, even if the cracks in Swift’s “reign” have started to show this (Brat) summer as the “Gen Z girls”—namely, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan—take over, there was still The Eras Tour to prove her “crown” undisputed. What with the hordes willing to schlep across the world and pay any price to see her (this also resulting in the “Taylor Swift economy” effect, as the business the tour brought to each stop bolstered the revenue of restaurants, hotels and the like). Including an American stalker of Swift’s, who made threats to both her and her current boyfriend, Travis Kelce. The stalker in question flew all the way to the Gelsenkirchen, Germany show, where he was arrested the day of the July 18th performance. Thus, the dark pall surrounding Swift got a shade darker. Ratcheting up on July 29th during a Taylor Swift-themed yoga class where twenty-five children turned up to participate. Tragically, three of those children, all girls, would not make it out alive after a stabbing rampage by a seventeen-year-old named Axel Rudakubana.

    In the aftermath of the attack, misinformation regarding the “background” (read: ethnicity and origins) of the stabber began to spread rampantly online, prompting ongoing political unrest throughout the UK that was propelled by proponents of the far-right. With Swift in the eye of the storm as the “link” to it all, any theories that the use of her name and music might have been a factor in the targeting of this class seemed to be corroborated by yet another, more ambitious terrorist (two, in fact) attempting to infiltrate her August 8th show in Vienna. The plot was foiled (ergo averting another 2017 Dangerous Woman Tour-level tragedy), with Swift spooked enough to cancel all three dates of her slated Vienna performances.

    This means she’ll be “on break” until August 15th, when her next rash of dates for The Eras Tour have her circling back to London’s Wembley Stadium, meaning that she’ll be in the heart of one of the sources of her recent darkness (apart from Joe Alwyn). And it wouldn’t be surprising if she mentioned the Southport stabbings while onstage (then again, Swift tends to disappoint when it comes to being open about anything “too political”).

    To round out the recent tincture of darkness enveloping the pop star, and almost as though to mock everything Swift and her fanbase represent, M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap was released at the beginning of August. It’s a movie that takes place at a “Taylor Swift-esque concert” where, you guessed it, a trap has been set up to lure and arrest a notorious serial killer (played by Josh Hartnett, in his villain era). Indeed, Shyamalan pitched the premise as: “What if The Silence of The Lambs happened at a Taylor Swift concert?” It doesn’t exactly help the current non-rosy image Swift seems to be embodying/attracting at the moment.

    But perhaps this darkness all goes back to what was initially referenced above: Swift’s obsession with being “ahead.” And while Swift herself loves to talk about karma, perhaps she didn’t consider the way in which she might have tipped the karmic scales by being so consumed with the number one (not, in this case, thirteen) spot. For it doesn’t feel like a cosmic coincidence that all of these horrible things should be happening after her summer of chart-blocking, preventing other women in the game from getting their flowers. All thanks to this thorny rose by the name of Swift.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • I’d Like A Quiet Ride: Daddio

    I’d Like A Quiet Ride: Daddio

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    Before even going into Daddio, the premise is already a hard sell. It’s just Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn talking for roughly one hour and forty minutes (or one hour, thirty-three if you exclude the credits). And yet, the script, written by Christy Hall, managed to make its way onto the Black List in 2017. Unsurprisingly, it was originally intended as a stage play, hence the minimalism and dialogue-heavy nature of it. But, being that a play usually has to be slightly more “bulletproof” with its dialogue, it’s a bit of a shock to see that the content of Daddio is so undeniably cringe. Not, as Hall, Johnson and Penn seemed to be hoping, “edgy” and “no holds barred.” In this case, some holds definitely ought to have been barred, starting with the unsavory gender cliches that both Johnson’s character, whose name is never revealed, and Clark, the driver played by Penn, embody.

    Perhaps just as vexing is that one keeps waiting (and hoping) for some theoretically inevitable twist that finds “Girlie” (this is how Johnson is referred to in the credits) upending everything that Clark thought he knew about life and women (and contempt for modern conveniences). Sort of the way Steve Buscemi’s 2007 film, Interview, did. In a similar fashion to Daddio, Interview also relies solely on the dialogue between a man and a woman of very different stature and in very different places in their lives, while also leaning mostly on one location: Katya’s (Sienna Miller) loft in Manhattan. The film was a remake of Theo van Gogh’s (yes, Vincent is his great-granduncle) 2003 movie of the same name, with Buscemi directing and starring in it, in addition co-writing the script with David Schechter. Like “Girlie” and Clark, Katya and Pierre (Buscemi) play what amounts to a game of verbal cat and mouse, with each person one-upping the other on “emotional sluttiness” as the movie unfolds.

    Hall likely thought that the context of a cab ride remains a totally plausible milieu in which someone might get overly confessional with a stranger. Even though, more than ever, no one wants to talk to their driver, least of all a female passenger forced to engage with a male “ferrier.” But, in having “Girlie” opt to take a yellow cab instead of using an app to call an Uber or a Lyft, etc., Hall seems to want to leave the impression that this woman is an “old soul.” Therefore, also willing to talk to an “old man” like Clark instead of totally disappearing into her phone. In fact, one of the first things Clark says to her is, “It’s nice you’re not on your phone. You don’t have to keep talking to me or nothing, but, just…nice. You, know? To see a human, not plugged in.” Here, it’s worth noting that a great many people do still relish the small talk interactions of the cab ride, along with small talk in other service-centric environments as well. Indeed, some are appalled at the idea that “quiet mode” a.k.a. “quiet ride” could even exist. That it only serves to make us all more isolated from one another and, consequently, even lonelier and more depressed. But then one looks to what a conversation between “Girlie” and Clark is like, and it’s enough to kill off all romanticism about the need for “interacting” with strangers.

    Something that “Girlie” appears rather deft at as she gives an obsequious laugh to Clark’s comment about her being off her phone and asks, “What’s your name?” When he tells her what it is, he doesn’t feel at all inclined to do the “human” thing and ask her what her own name is in response. Therefore, the namelessness of “Girlie,” despite the numerous opportunities presented where he could have asked for it, is one of many things about Daddio that makes it so inherently sexist. That a woman created the product, as usual, has nothing to do with the fact that it is a misogynistic one. Indeed, throughout the movie, rather than being repulsed by the type of man Clark is, “Girlie” only encourages him with her “coy looks” and reinforcing giggles.

    Clark’s overt chauvinism begins around the ten-minute mark of Daddio, when he tells “Girlie” that her “little outfit” gave her away in terms of being someone who actually lives in New York rather than someone who’s just visiting. Instead of being grossed out by that description, she titters and repeats, “My little outfit?” Clark then proceeds to rattle off the reasons why her outfit represents, ultimately, that she can “handle herself,” the supposed true mark of being a New Yorker (who can often never “handle themselves” anywhere else). For those wondering, at this point in the “narrative,” how the fuck it’s going to manage to drag on for a full movie-length amount of time, Hall presents the convenient obstacle of a standstill traffic jam around the twenty-one-minute mark. A.k.a. the proverbial “end of act one.” At which time, it starts to become clear that even 2004’s Taxi has more value when it comes to romanticizing cab rides.   

    With act two, Clark’s freak flag flies unchecked as he has the audacity to turn around (as “Girlie” is engaged in another gross text exchange with the older married man she’s having an affair with), slide open the partition and ask her, “Did you like getting tied up?” This in reference to a story she just told about her much older sister tying her up by her hands and legs and putting her in the empty bathtub when she was a kid. A means to teach her how to “escape” if she was ever kidnapped. Obviously, Clark is more turned on by than “sympathetic” to the story. Rather than shutting him down at this point, as she should have long ago, “Girlie” continues to invite Clark’s skeevy rhetoric by justifying the question with the answer, “I liked the challenge of getting free.”

    After enduring Clark’s “shrink bit” for a while though, there does come a point when “Girlie” finally has the presence of mind to say, “Go fuck yourself”—and it certainly took her long enough. Unfortunately, she opens the door, so to speak, to him again after he “apologizes” by saying, “I just like to push buttons.” Sounds like something his first wife, Madonna, might wield as an excuse. And yes, there’s a missed opportunity for playing one of her songs in the cab when Clark asks if “Girlie” wants to listen to the radio. To keep some aspect of the ride “quiet,” she opts to say no. And it goes without saying that there wasn’t enough money in the budget for “Papa Don’t Preach” (the lead single from the album Madonna actually dedicated to Penn, True Blue) to blast from the speakers—which, for “Girlie,” would have been far more emotionally soothing than indulging Clark for this fucking long. Or even the married man she keeps texting with, often revealing facial expressions that indicate how “icky” she feels at certain moments throughout the “conversation,” not least of which is when the married guy, saved in her phone as “L,” keeps insisting that he “needs her pink.” Needs her to get him off, etc., etc. Alas, she’s already busy getting Clark off on an emotional level in the cab.

    The car doesn’t start moving again until around the fifty-four-minute mark, which means thirty-three minutes have gone by wherein these two are as stationary as the plot and dialogue itself, the latter always dancing around the trope of “Girlie’s” “Daddy issues,” hence the reason why she’s with an older man who’s already taken. And yes, “Girlie” does get into it with Clark about her absentee father, and the fact that he never actually touched her as a child (you know, in the affectionate way, not the molester way).

    Far earlier than this point, a reasonable viewer might ask themselves: are there times when one is feeling this chatty with their driver? Apart from when one is a rich woman with a regular chauffeur? Sure, but this goes well-beyond the “TMI” level of believability. Granted, when straight women are in an especially vulnerable state, particularly over a dude, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for her to become confessional with another man—ideally, an “objective” stranger. Alas, the grotesqueness of their conversation would seemingly require a certain amount of drunkenness to be at play. Not least of which is the almost Woody Allen-meets-Jean-Luc Godard-esque exchange during which “Girlie” says to Clark, “If I told you that I was twenty-four or thirty-four, your opinion of me would drastically change.” He replies, “That’s not true.” She rebuffs, “For women, it is true. It is fuckin’ true. The moment we hit thirty, our value is cut in half.” Clark shrugs, “I mean, fine. Fuck it, it’s true.” He then “comforts” her by adding, “You really do look twenty-something, but by the way you talk all smart and shit, you know, if I wasn’t lookin’ I would guess you were fifty.” (Side note: Dakota Johnson is thirty-four.)

    Through all this supposed repartee (again, by more twentieth century standards of what would constitute that), a tension seems to keep building, but there is never any real release. Never any grand denouement that would make it worthwhile enough to, as a viewer, endure this very long cab ride. Not even the “revelatory” final piece of information that “Girlie” metes out to Clark.

    Worse still, “Girlie” is so “touched” by Clark’s toxic masculinity-based candor that she tips him five hundred dollars at the end of the ride. Of course, an Uber would have been much cheaper in every way, not to mention the prior-to-booking offer it gives to have a “quiet ride” and not deal with any chatty bullshit from fundamentally lonely men like Clark, a driver who, in the end, doesn’t make anyone feel all that nostalgic about the slow death of the yellow cab.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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