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  • The Pros and Cons of “Like A Prayer” in Deadpool & Wolverine

    The Pros and Cons of “Like A Prayer” in Deadpool & Wolverine

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    Madonna hasn’t been shy about wanting her music catalogue to be appreciated by “the next generation.” In a 2022 interview with Variety, she even stated as much explicitly: “I’m just looking for interesting, fun ways to rerelease my catalogue and introduce my music to a new generation.” And yes, that was the same interview during which she also added that she had no intention of selling her back catalogue to anyone (as a slew of other “legacy artists” have done of late) because, as she remarked, “Ownership is everything” (an aphorism that has decidedly neoliberal overtones—something Taylor Swift can obviously get on board with).

    As for funneling her music into the ears of a younger generation, it goes without saying that she’s been a fairly noticeable TikTok proponent, engaging with the various trends and challenges of the moment. In 2022, Madonna even experienced a viral blip on the app with, of all things, an unreleased demo called “Back That Up to the Beat” (which was initially composed during her Hard Candy era before making it onto 2019’s Madame X as a bonus track). But her most “interesting” method of reaching a new generation, of late, has been to license “Like A Prayer” for use in Deadpool & Wolverine, the third installment in the Deadpool series of films starring Ryan Reynolds.

    In terms of how that particular single came to be such “a thing” for the movie, Reynolds explained during an interview for Live with Kelly and Mark, “‘Like A Prayer’ has been stuck in my head for six years with respect to this movie, and its application—how we use ‘Like A Prayer’ in the movie is exactly what I’d been thinking about for six years. The problem [was], like, I put it in the script, I built stuff around it and I hadn’t yet asked for permission to use it.” In another interview discussing the song’s use, Reynolds added, “It was a big deal to ask for, and certainly a bigger deal to use it. We went over and met with her and showed her how it was being used and where and why.” (Somehow, one doubts that Harmony Korine did the same for a scene in 1997’s Gummo.)

    But, more than anything, it was “one of her sons” (though it’s unclear if that means Rocco Ritchie or David Banda) being a fan of Deadpool that incited Madonna to take the plunge on licensing such a timeless, beautiful song for a Marvel movie. As Kayla Schaefer (Megan Stalter) on Hacks puts it in season three, “Executives love listening to their kids.” In this case, that executive is Madonna, the CEO of all things Queen of Pop-related. And yet, taking advice from others on what to do with her image and work hasn’t always gone according to plan (think: her strong affiliation with the Bored Ape Yacht Club).

    In this scenario, the consequence of “lending” “Like A Prayer” to such a specific and highly commercial cause is twofold. On the one hand, Madonna has achieved her aim of infecting the minds of a younger generation as that “Like A Prayer” scene makes the rounds on TikTok. On the other, now little ignorant assholes are referring to the track as “the song from Deadpool,” not seeming to comprehend how reductive and disrespectful it is to the true majesty of the work. Maybe Madonna didn’t totally account for how “giving” the song to Reynolds would result in it being subsequently forever associated with 1) a fight scene where Deadpool and Wolverine take on a wide range of other Deadpools and 2) a scene where Hugh Jackman’s abs are prominently focused on as the duo works to prevent the Time Ripper from destroying all timelines.

    Neither scene, of course, really suits the lyrics of “Like A Prayer,” apart from, one supposes, “I can feel your power.” But maybe, beyond that, Reynolds was going for a certain “tone,” and “Like A Prayer” fit the bill more than anything else he could come up with. Even though, in truth, there are many other Madonna songs that might have better embodied the vibe, including “Frozen,” “4 Minutes” and “Give It 2 Me.” Alas, Madonna’s “later” work is rarely as lauded or appreciated as the material she released before the mid-nineties. And when it comes to Marvel movies, choosing the song with the most wide-ranging appeal is the name of the game. Hence, using one of her biggest hits from, what else, the eighties.

    Evidently wanting to get their mileage out of shelling out to license the track, Reynolds as Deadpool even makes a comment about it after emerging from his death brush with Wolverine to inform everyone, “You put a Deadpool and a Wolverine together, make ‘em hold hands while listening to Madonna: indestructible, motherfucker.” Sort of like Madonna herself, who has continuously “reanimated” (a.k.a. reinvented) during every decade of her career to show that her ability to adapt to each new era (whether that means embracing certain technology, apps or, now, film franchises) itself informs her own eras—which then inform pop culture itself. And the cycle goes on and on…presumably in every timeline.

    The major drawback of that, however, is that, as she angles to get her back catalogue into the ears of new listeners (perhaps aware that only the true die-hards are more interested in her releasing new music), she is left with little choice but to dilute the integrity of the original product. And that’s a big digression for someone who once defiantly told her father when he asked of her Blond Ambition Tour, “Can’t you tone it down a bit?”: “No, because that would be compromising my artistic integrity.” This being precisely what Madonna has done (though not for the first time) in opting to have “Like A Prayer” so prominently featured in Deadpool & Wolverine. But maybe it’s better to have the song remembered for being in the latter than so prominently used in the recent fail that was The Idol.

    And, on the note of “failure,” it’s a good thing, for Madonna’s sake, that Deadpool & Wolverine has surpassed the box office receipts of the first two movies—lest Madonna somehow get blamed for being “box office kryptonite” (though that’s technically a DC word) even when she’s not actually in the movie.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Fantasmas Takes Aim at the Ever Less Gradual Stamping Out of People Who Can’t (Or Won’t) “Prove Themselves” Digitally

    Fantasmas Takes Aim at the Ever Less Gradual Stamping Out of People Who Can’t (Or Won’t) “Prove Themselves” Digitally

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    In the opening scene of Fantasmas’ first episode, “Cookies and Spaghetti,” Julio (Julio Torres) is having a nightmare about filling out an online application that asks, among other things, what his occupation is. In response, he simply fills in his name: Julio. (It’s a whole thing later on in the episode that his job is, quite simply, “being Julio.”) The screen automatically reacts to that in red capital letters that chide, “INVALID OCCUPATION.” When Julio then tries to fill out his address as “my water tower,” the screen also spits back, “ADDRESS NOT FOUND.” When he tries to submit the form, it immediately tells him, “REJECTED.” All the while, he’s been dressed in a Pierrot-meets-jester sort of ensemble topped with what amounts to a dunce hat. Every time he fills one of the questions out, he then tries to open a window that ends up not existing behind one of the curtains he pulls back. The symbolism is instantly obvious: Julio (and those like him) is being literally boxed out of society because they can’t quite fit into any specific, “prepopulated” box.

    That symbolism continues in Julio’s waking life, when he goes to Crayola to offer his consulting services. Accordingly, he tells the three suits in front of them they need to make a crayon that is clear. One of the suits responds, “But clear isn’t a color.” Julio counters, “If it isn’t a color, then what do you call this?… The space between us.” The same suit replies, “If a crayon is a clear wax and it leaves no discernible color behind, what’s the use?” Another suit chimes in, “It cannot be done! Why are you doing this? Why do you need this?” “It’s already done.” Julio then looks to his glass of water for backup to say, “Look at this glass of water over here. It’s defiantly clear. Some things aren’t one of the normal colors or play by the rules of the rainbow.” When the meeting is over and one of the suits walks him out, he tells Julio, “If we were to move forward with clear Crayola, what would we call it?” Julio responds, “Call it Fantasmas. It means ‘ghosts.’” Even that renders the executive confused as he then asks why it would be plural instead of singular. Julio has no answer that would satisfy such a “logical” mind. Thus, he pretends to go along with “Fantasma” as the title card for the show comes up and an “S” is then added to the end of the word after a momentary pause.

    And it is a pointed title, for a large core of the show speaks to how many people in this world are forced to become “ghosts” when they either can’t or simply refuse to bend to what society demands of them. This includes, at the top of the list, having a sizable paper trail that proves both your existence and your longstanding ability to pay for things. In the U.S., the one certainly can’t exist without the other. Something that Torres has grappled with not just when he was dealing with visa-oriented paperwork after graduating from college, but also as a result of his newfound success. For, even now, Torres resents the idea that you have to have a credit card in order to build the credit that helps prove your existence. As he told Indiewire, “I do not have a credit card, and have always had trouble [renting an apartment] because of it. That’s the impetus for the whole [storyline]. Although I made the money to have the kind of apartment that I was applying for, I was rejected, even though I was willing to basically pay a year’s rent upfront. They were like, ‘No, we went with an applicant who had,’ and I quote, ‘overqualified guarantors.’ Wink, they have really rich parents.” The automatic assumption, especially in New York, that those without a credit history or a lot of money can “just” get help from their parents is also addressed in Fantasmas.

    This moment arises when, Edwin (Bernardo Velasco), a food deliverer who can’t bring Julio’s order to him in a timely fashion because every form of transportation requires proof of existence (obvious shade at the updated version of the MTA’s MetroCard, OMNY, a “tap-and-go” system that requires a debit or credit card), ends up talking to Gina (Greta Titelman), another recurring character in the series. Having recently been dumped by her sugar daddy, Gina sits on a bench sobbing. Edwin, almost as desperate as she is, decides to ask her, of all people, to explain to him what proof of existence is, and how to get it.

    She shrugs, “You just go to the app, and you put in your social and your credit score—” Edwin tells her, “I don’t have that.” “Don’t have what?” “Any of that.” Gina then brightens, “Well, can you use your parents? You know, I had to use my parents’ address after Charles dumped me.” Edwin is confused about the suggestion, wondering, “What do my parents have to do with it?” After all, unlike many white folks, it doesn’t come as an automatic given that one can turn to their parents for financial support. Thus, Gina proves herself to be the very sort of cliché that gives white women a bad name. Even so, she explains the same thing to Edwin that Julio’s been told by his manager, of sorts, Vanesja (Martine)—who is technically just supposed be a performance artist performing as his manager. Which is: sometimes, “exceptions” are made if someone is, like, “a thing” a.k.a. famous enough. Here, too, Torres makes a commentary on how fame has become the sole pursuit of many people growing up (and even after they’re theoretically “grown”), without having an actual focus in mind. In other words, they don’t care what they’re famous for, they just want to be famous (even if it’s “famous for being famous”). After all, it makes you an “exception” to every rule.

    In real life, though, Torres hasn’t found that to be entirely true, also telling Indiewire of his post-fame apartment-renting experience, “It’s not about getting the money that you’re asking for, it’s about the kind of person that you’re renting to. You’re measuring people by not only how much money they have, but how long they’ve had that money for and how equipped they are to win this race. The idea that everyone’s born with a clean slate is false. And so, I was very interested in exploring that [in Fantasmas].”

    The show version of Julio’s ongoing struggles with finding an apartment (the one he’s currently in is slated to become a “General Mills Café and Residencies”) harken back to Lily Allen singing, “It’s just the bureaucrats who won’t give me a mortgage/It’s very funny ’cause I got your fuckin’ money/And I’m never gonna get it just ’cause of my bad credit/Oh well, I guess I mustn’t grumble/I suppose it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.” This said on 2006’s “Everything’s Just Wonderful.” A phrase Julio has a harder and harder time telling himself as the walls start to more than just figuratively close in. Still, he remains defiant about not capitulating to getting his proof of existence card. No matter how “easy” it’s supposed to be. As he tells his usual cab driver, Chester (Tomas Matos), who also doesn’t have one, “I don’t have it because I don’t want it.” It’s become a matter of principle now, a way to say “fuck you” to a system that has never made it easy for him—or anyone like him—to get by.

    Even when he tries to eradicate himself as an actual body (in one of many acts of desperation related to not being able to find an apartment without proof of existence), Vicky (Sydnee Washington), the employee at New Solutions Incorporated, inquires with genuine shock, “How do you have an apartment? I mean, how do you take out a loan? They’re gonna be asking for it as soon as you’re on the subway.” Julio automatically tunes out these questions—so accustomed to dissociating in scenarios where he’s bombarded with stressful queries related to “getting real” and living a normie lifestyle—and focuses in on a commercial that’s playing on the TV in the background (it’s here that Denise the Toilet Dresser [Aidy Bryant] gets her moment to shine).

    The pressure that even casual strangers put on Julio to “get with it” and surrender to proof of existence (and everything that such a surrender actually entails) goes back to the aforementioned recurring dream. In it, Julio would have to leave the room (you know, the one with no windows in it) in order to get fresh air. The problem is, outside, it’s freezing cold, which is why everyone passing by is wearing an “unremarkable black puffer coat.” Julio can see that if he, too, wants to join the others in freshness, he would have to wear one of the same puffer coats. And there just so happens to be one within his grasp that literally has his name on it. All he has to do is walk out, take the jacket and put it on.

    But to put it on would mean becoming one of them. One of those “proof of existence” people. He sums up the dream by saying, “The only way I would be able to leave [the room] is by compromising somehow.” And this is the dilemma that every artistic person (or, also in Torres’ case, every U.S. immigrant) is faced with sooner or later. Often cropping up repeatedly if they never succeed in finding a way to dodge it. To become an “exception.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Pee-Wee’s Playhouse + The Science of Sleep + The Mighty Boosh + Problemista + Kafka = Fantasmas

    Pee-Wee’s Playhouse + The Science of Sleep + The Mighty Boosh + Problemista + Kafka = Fantasmas

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    Many people still like to tout that we’re in the Golden Age of television, forgetting perhaps that, for much of the 2000s, a new wave of innovation not seen since the 1980s was happening with said medium. Obviously, the most creative and absurd television show to come out of the Decade of Excess was Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. In fact, it’s a wonder that the show was ever greenlit and then allowed to continue for even more than a season, so “offbeat” and “weird” was it. And yet, children (and adults) immediately gravitated to the content, which was so different for the era of “normie Reaganism.” In commenting on the appeal of the show to Time in 2006, Paul Reubens stated, “At the time there weren’t many live-action people on [kids’] television. It was a time of Transformers and merchandise-driven shows that I didn’t think were creative. I believe kids liked the Playhouse because it was very fast-paced and colorful. And more than anything, it never talked down to them. I always felt like kids were real smart and should be dealt with that way.”

    In the present, it has become more and more the case that even adults are talked down to and treated rather stupidly (which is perhaps part of the reason why the U.S. has gradually transitioned into a place that’s destined to fulfill the predictions laid out in Idiocracy). Not only that, but all the programming geared toward that demographic has either become so serious or, on the other end of the spectrum, mind-numbing “reality” TV. In the early 00s, just as the latter category of television was gaining popularity, the British duo known as The Mighty Boosh (Julian Barratt and Noel Fieliding) would come together to eventually bring audiences The Mighty Boosh, a surrealist comedy that aired from 2004 to 2007. Sandwiched in between those years was the release of Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep in 2006, an equally as surreal offering that seemed to indicate the population’s desire to retreat into fantasy at a time dominated by the brutal, embarrassing (for Americans, anyway) realities of war in a post-9/11 world. With Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, the same phenomenon was happening in the world, where a desire to retreat into the fantastical was preferable to further exposing oneself to the brainwashing propaganda instilled on both sides by the Cold War.

    Perhaps it can be said, then, that the arrival of Julio Torres’ Fantasmas also coincides with an overall desire to retreat into fantasy. Because, despite the “hope” of Kamala Harris taking things in a new direction for the U.S., the realities of 2024 remain particularly bleak. That doesn’t just include the ongoing Palestinian genocide, but so many other horrors that are less publicized, including the civil war and famine in Sudan, the violent oppression of women in Afghanistan, the violence and political instability in Venezuela, the total lawlessness of Haiti, the high rates of femicide in Mexico (indeed, Latin America overall has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world), the climate-related disasters that have led to something as impactful as the endlessly raging wildfires in Canada. The list truly does go on and on. And with so much brutality in the world, even in “ultra-modern,” “land of the free” America, one can’t blame Torres for often retreating into the comforts of his mind, where reality can be diluted and subdued. Especially since he lives in one of the shittiest places on Earth: New York. Of course, it’s no secret that New Yorkers get off on their misery, pride themselves on being able to “take it” where other more “lily-livered” types can’t. (Or simply have the good sense and self-respect to leave.)

    Perhaps knowing that the “real” New York isn’t all that romantic, Torres opts to create an “alternate version” of it in Fantasmas. And yes, as he freely admits, there are many correlations to his directorial debut, Problemista, in terms of both setting, tone and character. As he told Indiewire, “It feels like a sequel to [Problemista], with achieving the quote-unquote ‘Dream.’” But more than that, it’s the types of magical realism details in Problemista that parallel Fantasmas. Take, for example, how Alejandro (Torres) works at a place called FreezeCorp in Problemista, where clients pay to have themselves cryogenically frozen so that they might come to life in the future (again, Idiocracy comes to mind…or Austin Powers). In reality, as Isabella Rossellini narrates, “This company provides a form of euthanasia.” In the commercial, the FreezeCorp spokeswoman admits, “Our scientists are working around the clock to one day discover how to bring our patients back.”

    The FreezeCorp-esque entity in Fantasmas, called New Solutions Incorporated, instead pivots to the notion of uploading one’s consciousness and disposing of their corporeal self altogether. As Vicky (Sydnee Washington) assures Julio, “Our incorporeal service can free you of your daily bodily ailments and discomforts.” And, considering Julio is convinced he has skin cancer, he’s only too ready to get on board with what Grimes was already advocating for back in 2018 with “We Appreciate Power” when she said, “Come on, you’re not even alive/If you’re not backed up on a drive/And if you long to never die/Baby, plug in, upload your mind.” That’s just what Julio intends to do—the only problem is, like every other minor endeavor in this hyper-bureaucratic world, the company requires him to show “Proof of Existence” in order to participate. Irritated yet again by this demand, Julio asks incredulously, “I need to prove that I exist so I can stop existing?”

    It’s enough to drive him battier than riding in the car with Chester (Tomas Matos), a former Uber driver who has decided to create his own rideshare app called, what else, Chester. It is in his car that Julio first learns about the existence of a show called Melf, playing on the TV in the back of the cab. Needless to say, it’s a sendup of ALF (an acronym for Alien Life Form), the late 80s sitcom that centered on an alien that looks more like he fled from the Planet Sesame Street. Like Alf, Melf ends up landing on the doorstep of a suburban family, but Julio takes the original concept and turns it on its ear by creating a sordid romance between Melf and Jeff (Paul Dano), the character modeled after Willie Tanner (Max Wright). Instead of making it “wholesome” family content, Julio positions Melf and Jeff as secret lovers who hide their trysts until it finally becomes too obvious to Jeff’s wife, Nancy (Sunita Mani). Despite the pain he causes his family—and the international scandal it invokes—Jeff is happy he can finally be his authentic self, free to love the, er, being he really wants to. It is little digressions like these that also make Fantasmas reminiscent of the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse style. Granted, Torres has far more “k-hole” moments, if you will, than Pee-Wee ever did. From Dodo the Elf (Bowen Yang) to Denise (Aidy Bryant) the Toilet Dresser to Becca the Customer Service Rep for Assembly Plan Insurance. It is the latter character who also ties into a scene from Problemista when Alejandro calls a banking representative after seeing that he has a negative amount in his account.

    Not understanding how he got so overdrawn, she chirpily tells him, “Every time you overdraft, the bank must impose a penalty of thirty-five dollars.” In disbelief, Julio snaps back, “So, what? Like an eight-dollar sandwich becomes a forty-five-dollar sandwich?” “Forty-three dollars,” she corrects matter-of-factly, adding, “That’s the policy, Mr. Martinez.” Julio continues to rebuff, “But that makes absolutely no sense. I distinctly recall making a cash deposit.” “And that deposit was flagged as potentially fraudulent, so it’s on hold now. For your protection.” “Right, but then that hold made me overdraw… Why would you let this happen? Why not just let my card get declined?” Unfazed, the representative says, “That’s not the way things work.” “But that is the way things should work. Otherwise, the bank is just benefitting from my misfortune. From the misfortune of people who can’t afford to make any mistakes. From people who have no margin of error.” “It’s policy. It is what it is.” Julio then launches into an even more emotional plea, concluding, “I know that there’s still a person in there, and I know that she can hear me.” For a moment, it seems like she might actually come around, only to end up shooting him in the face as she declares, “I stand with Bank of America.”

    This bank representative is so clearly the precursor for Becca in Fantasmas, who gets an ostensible orgasm over other people’s suffering as she delivers the voiceover, “God, I love insurance. And banks, and credit cards, and the military. Law and order. I pity those who do not stand behind us.” Torres’ contempt for people who are simply “following orders” (you know, like the Nazis) is a hallmark of his work. Along with his total inability, as someone with an abstract artist’s mind, to fathom how anyone could live with themselves at such a job (acting as a gatekeeper who gets off on their own small form of power). Apart from the reason of “needing money to survive”—by fucking up other people’s survival.

    In this sense, too, Torres touches on the idea that the employees of color so often working in these roles are only hurting their own kind in service of the white CEOs and other assorted power mongers at the top. The system in place, thus, continues to thrive through division and pitting people (usually the “unmonied”) against each other.

    Another noticeable similarity between Julio in Fantasmas and Alejandro is that the latter has a similar form of hypochondria, at one point texting his mother a picture of his tongue with the caption (in Spanish), “Do you see those dots? Is that something bad?” For Julio, the obsession becomes all about the birthmark that looks like a mole just underneath his ear. Rather than focusing on the crushing pressure and simultaneous banality of dealing with his ever-mounting bureaucratic affairs, Julio would rather obsess over finding the oyster-shaped earring that was the exact same shape as his birthmark so that he can place it against said birthmark in front of a doctor to prove that it’s grown, therefore needs to be biopsied.

    There to occasionally try to make him see reason is his “manager.” Or rather a performance artist playing his manager, but who has been doing it for so long that she’s really just his manager now. Alas, not even Vanesja (played by real-life performance artist Martine) or Julio’s “assistant,” a robot named Bibo (Joe Rumrill), can distract him from his quest to be distracted. And in the world of Fantasmas, there are many shiny people and objects to be distracted by—as there should be in any narrative worth its weight in magical realism.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • A Panty-Dropping, Project X Affair: Charli XCX and Billie Eilish’s “Guess” Video

    A Panty-Dropping, Project X Affair: Charli XCX and Billie Eilish’s “Guess” Video

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    When Charli first, er, teased the album artwork for the “Guess” remix featuring Billie Eilish, she dared her fans to, that’s right, guess who it was joining her on the cover for this revamped edition. Despite the retroactive dead giveaway that it was Billie Eilish (you know, the butch, 90s boy aesthetic), perhaps no one, in their wildest fantasies, could have imagined that such an iconic collaboration would come on the heels of Charli working with Lorde on the “Girl, so confusing” remix. And, like Lorde, Eilish has plenty to offer when it comes to contributing a new verse to this track. One that is on-brand for the sex-drenched nature of the song.

    Funnily enough, it seems to have taken a millennial to help Gen Z remember that life doesn’t have to be sexless. It can be raunchy, promiscuous and, yes, even panty-dropping. In short, it can recapture all the key visuals of Project X. And if Charli and Billie comprised the collaboration people had only dreamed about, it would be in keeping with the premise of that movie, with its tagline: “The party you’ve only dreamed about.” This is the effect Charli is going for in the Aidan Zamiri-directed video for “Guess,” which also seems to recreate the garbage-filled aesthetic of the Atacama Desert in Chile, where fast fashion goes to die, creating massive piles within the landfill. It’s a similar pile that Charli and Billie mount toward the middle of the video, only to roll back down it with glee as they meet one another at the bottom in a shot that positions them lying side by side as though they just banged (metaphorically, they kind of have).

    To that end, perhaps Charli has learned her lesson (somewhat) about promoting environment-destroying behavior (hear: any of her songs that serve as love letters to driving) by including a disclaimer at the end of the video that reads, “All unworn garments will be donated to survivors of domestic violence through I Support the Girls.” Of course, all the “garments” in question are lingerie-related, which is a bit of an odd donation to make to victims of domestic abuse, but anyway…

    Zamiri, who also photographed Eilish for her Rolling Stone cover earlier this year, opens the video on a close-up of Charli’s sunglasses-covered face (the ultimate symbol of her Brat era) as she asks, “Billie, you there?” The answer to that question is: not just yet. Billie’s big entrance will be made once the party is already well underway. A party that takes place in a more 90s-ified version of the apartment style Charli showed us in the “Baby” video. After the close-up on her face, she introduces herself by cuntily walking across the trash-filled carpet. The timeline of whether the party already happened or is about to happen or she’s simply having another one without cleaning up from the night before isn’t important. What is, however, is the fact that Project X has so obviously remained a tried-and-true inspiration for XCX’s work. It was back in 2020 that she declared, “I think I’ve officially decided that Project X is my favorite movie of all time.” No matter how retrospectively uncomfortable the R. Kelly mention gets. And while others might see the 2012 high school comedy as “nothing special,” it makes sense that XCX would continue to idealize it. After all, she’s a big believer in party alchemy. The “power of the party,” as it were.

    Case in point, back in 2019, when she did an interview for Nowness, Charli said, “I’m very inspired by parties. Lots of emotional things happen at parties, like, maybe you fall in love with someone, or you, like, spend a really amazing night with your friends, or you break up with someone. It’s, like, there’s a lot of emotions that go on at parties…” Hence, her attachment to them as more than something that’s merely “frivolous.” It’s a microcosm, a hotbed of unmitigated feelings (mainly thanks to las drogas). And the primary ones at this “Guess” party are, in two words, “let’s fuck.” The writhing, gyrating and general “every guy, grab a girl” vibe is practically a constant of the narrative.

    In promoting this concept, Charli also proves that, theoretically, the “clean girl aesthetic” is over and that, accordingly, it’s “safe” to promote the messy lifestyle that goes hand in hand with drinking and drugging yet again (not that Charli ever really ceased doing that). Hence, the constant flash to partygoers smoking (actual cigarettes, none of this vape bullshit) and drinking throughout “Guess.”

    Indeed, it can be argued that the last time partying in this manner was so acceptable was, in fact, back in 2012, when Project X was released. It was also the year of Kesha’s sophomore album, Warrior, which continued the “grimy girl” motif of her debut, Animal. Her vehement “party or die” (or “party and die,” depending on the person) mantra endured with a song like “Die Young,” during which Kesha declared, “Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young/Young hearts, out our minds/Runnin’ till we outta time/Wild childs, lookin’ good/Livin’ hard just like we should/Don’t care who’s watching when we tearing it up (you know)/That magic that we got nobody can touch.” This is the sentiment that permeates the “Guess” video, even if the lyrics themselves are far less wholesome, and much more in keeping with the gratuitously salacious tone of Charli’s other film favorite, Spring Breakers (though Camila Cabello tried her best to co-opt that “mood board” for C,XOXO).

    This includes Eilish’s sexually-charged verse, “Don’t have to guess the color of your underwear/Already know what you’ve got goin’ on down there/It’s that lacy black pair with the little bows/The ones I picked out for you in Tokyo/I saw them when you sat down, they were peekin’ out/I’m gonna tell you right now, they’re all I’m thinkin’ about.” She delivers these lines after literally crashing the party in a bulldozer (it kind of reminds one of the way the party in Weird Science was crashed by the mutant bikers, riding right through the walls/glass doors to get in).

    Charli eventually leaves the party with Billie (perhaps taking the latter up on her offer, “Charli likes boys, but she knows I’d hit it/Charli, call me if you’re with it”), riding on the side of the bulldozer/tractor as she bounces in a similar way to how she did in the video for “360” while pouring a glass of wine. Zamiri then rapidly intercuts scenes between the original party and the two-woman rager that Charli and Billie have continued together outside in the “wilds” of a concrete jungle somewhere in L.A. (for both singers favor that city, like anyone with consummate taste).

    To conclude the even more sexed-up remix, the duo goads, “You wanna guess the address of the party we’re at (you really are not invited)/You wanna guess if we’re serious about this song.” That last line smacks of Justin Timberlake assuring at the end of “Rock Your Body,” “Gonna have you naked by the end of this song.” And sure, while he might be permanently “cancelled,” there’s no denying XCX was influenced by NSYNC, de facto Timberlake, at some point in the late 90s/early 00s.

    As for boasting about the “hoi polloi” not being invited to the party, not only is it typical Brat behavior, it’s also in keeping with the necessary exclusivity of celebrities like XCX and Eilish, who have both dealt with their fair share of creepy civilian behavior. So one supposes that’s why the party of Project X was patently more epic in scope and aftermath—it didn’t discriminate about the guest list.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Like Everything That “Pays Homage” to 00s Pop Culture, Halsey’s “Lucky” Is A Pale, Unsatisfying Imitation

    Like Everything That “Pays Homage” to 00s Pop Culture, Halsey’s “Lucky” Is A Pale, Unsatisfying Imitation

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    The rollout of Halsey’s “new era” has been almost as rocky as Katy Perry’s. While the latter tried to pass off the Dr. Luke-produced “Woman’s World” as a feminist anthem, Halsey, instead, opted to pass off the second single from her as-of-yet-untitled fifth album, “Lucky,” as an “homage” to Britney Spears, better known as the Queen of the 2000s. And while Halsey was certain to announce of recreating the song/video for Spears’ 2000 hit, “I wouldn’t even dream of doing it without her blessing!,” Spears’ response felt more that slightly “off” if that was truly the case.

    Even so, Spears later updated her stance on the song after deleting the original post, commenting, “Fake news !!! That was not me on my phone !!! I love Halsey and that’s why I deleted it 🌹 !!!” This reply, in all honesty, sounded much more in line with her usual manner of speaking, complete with an emoji usage and lots of exclamation points. In contrast, the original statement came across as too composed and clinical to be the true mark of Spears, with whoever “stole” her phone writing, “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.” Rather than sounding like “authentic” Spears, it has the mark of an AI-generated response based on some of her previous soundbites (like when she said during the Piece of Me residency in undercutting reference to her conservatorship, “It feels kind of illegal doing this with this mic in my hand right now, it feels so weird”). But whether Spears was in some way behind the originally expressed sentiment or not, the knee-jerk reaction of contempt is not without its merit. For, so often, attempts at homage not only tend to fall flat, but come across as rather insulting (like Kelly Osbourne covering Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” back in 2002 or Tina Fey sanctioning the musical-movie version of Mean Girls in 2024).

    From the moment the video opens on a child version of Halsey outside a home of, let’s say, modest appearance, and the 00s-inspired pink font spelling out “Lucky” with a star around the “L” tops it off, it’s obvious that this is going to be uncomfortable to watch. Worse still, as though to play up the “inferior artist imitating a greater one” angle, Halsey tapped Gia Coppola to direct the video. “Child Halsey” then runs to get into a car as the opening line, “I am so lucky” plays. Of course, it’s tinged with a sardonic bent, for there’s nothing that lucky about being relentlessly scrutinized. Something that Britney actually knows much more about than most pop stars, Halsey included. After all, it was because of her being subjected to so many egregious privacy violations in the 00s that a law was passed in California in 2009 that made it “a crime to take and sell unauthorized photos of celebrities in ‘personal or familial activity.’” Few other celebrities can lay claim to paving such a path for basic human rights for celebrities. Obviously, all it cost Britney was her mental health. Indeed, Spears was diagnosed as being bipolar (just as Halsey was) in 2008 and has stated of the condition, “I have always been kind of shy, since I was a little girl. It’s who I am to be modest, so I really can’t help it. I turn into this different person…seriously, bipolar disorder.” The “different person” she turns into for the stage was always difficult to reconcile with the shy girl from the South. And maybe it was the less shy version of herself that lashed out in response to Halsey’s rendering of “Lucky.” A version that tries to take the specific pain of Spears and make it her own.

    And as this version of Halsey’s childhood unfolds, we see a cold, distant father walk into the house while his daughter watches TV—the two scarcely acknowledge one another as the lyric, “Did it all to be included, my self-loathing so deep-rooted” plays in the background. After being ignored (the ultimate parental sin, as confirmed by Allison Reynolds [Ally Sheedy] in The Breakfast Club), she retreats into her poster-filled room. The posters, of course, are of Halsey, styled in Spears-circa-the-00s looks. The girl then puts a load of what is now referred to as “Euphoria makeup” on (even though Euphoria takes its makeup aesthetic from the 2000s), mimicking dance moves that are decidedly pulled from a Spears video (either that, or Madonna’s “Vogue”). The camera then focuses in on one of the Halsey posters so that the Halsey “inside” of it (wearing a sheer, crystal-embellished bodysuit designed to remind viewers of the “Toxic” video) can come to life and parrot the original “Lucky” chorus, switching it up to use the first person point of view instead: “But I’m so lucky, I’m a star/And I cry, cry, cry in my lonely heart, thinkin, ‘If there’s nothin’ missin’ in my life/Then why do these tears come at night?’” Well, maybe they come now because of the ostensible rejection Spears displayed toward this song.

    A crushing blow, considering that Halsey recently stated during a promotional interview for Maxxxine that the defining star for her growing up was “Britney Spears, all day. I didn’t think anyone could be, like, more of a star. I actually don’t know that I even knew at that—I was like six—because I was also born in 1994… But I was, like, I didn’t know that I knew she was a person outside of the CD. I thought she lived in there. And every time I played it, she had to sing.” A “childlike” belief (replicated in making Halsey come to life inside the abovementioned poster) that’s eerily telling of how much Spears was viewed as nothing more than a trained monkey “created” solely to amuse the masses. To dance and sing like a puppet. It was no wonder she started to let loose as the mid-00s progressed, shedding the “good girl” image she was saddled with from the outset of her career. This period is alluded to in Halsey’s video as well, during a moment when she can be seen drunkenly laughing in a nightclub setting before appearing on a red carpet (looking more like 00s-era P!nk than Spears) for “TGI” (the fake music news network modeled after the MTV logo).

    In the next few scenes, the homage front starts to get even messier as Halsey tries to jam-pack a hodgepodge of Britney-in-the-00s-related images into the narrative. This includes getting out of a car and being swarmed by paparazzi, wearing a basketball jersey in the recording studio, being miserable in her fancy house—and this is where the nod to “Everytime” comes in. Because, for whatever reason, Simon Rex is there to play her abusive boyfriend. An actor choice on par with Stephen Dorff playing Britney’s abusive boyfriend in the “Everytime” video (which owes its indelible look to direction by David LaChapelle). And, to play up the notion that Halsey, like Britney, got her poor taste in men as a result of the first man she had as an example—her father—Coppola intercuts the scene of Halsey and Rex arguing (as bombastically as Spears and Dorff) with Halsey and her father arguing when she was a child. A moment befitting the lyric, “Inner child that’s unrecruited, truth is/I’m not suited for it.” Indeed, perhaps only pursued “it” a.k.a. fame “just to be liked by strangers that she met online.”

    This idea of not being built for such a machine has also been emphasized by Spears, who stated, “I’m not really made for this industry.” And yes, anyone who is especially sensitive should avoid what Lady Gaga calls “The Fame” at all costs. Not that Spears had too much of a choice once her parents pushed her down the path for their own selfish, money-grubbing motives. A path that led to endless scrutiny, particularly of Spears’ body. To that point, another lyrical moment on Halsey’s “Lucky” reeks of Britney singing, “I’m Mrs. She’s Too Big Now She’s Too Thin” during “Piece of Me,” with Halsey phrasing it as, “And why she losin’ so much weight?/I heard it’s from the drugs she ate.”

    There’s another somewhat awkward allusion to Britney when Halsey also mentions, “I shaved my head four times because I wanted to/And then I did it one more time ’cause I got sick,” with everyone knowing that Britney’s 2007 head shaving is what led her down an abyssal spiral from which she couldn’t return. Especially with regard to that moment being leveraged as a prime example of her “madness,” therefore the need for her to be placed under a conservatorship. As for referencing the original “Lucky” video itself, the only instance of that is in the idea that there are two Halseys—the younger one and the famous one, with the latter watching over the former. The two only meet at the end of the video, when Famous Halsey (dressed, incidentally, like Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, another piece of pop culture from 2000) sits next to Young Halsey on a swing set. Alas, in the very final scene, Coppola returns to the swing set with Famous Halsey sitting all alone, the child version of herself having disappeared. An obvious metaphor for how all innocence is stamped out of you once you’ve been emotionally bulldozed for long enough.

    And it seems that’s the case for Halsey, who recently wrote of her “return” to music, “It’s hard to want to engage in a space that is completely devoid of any kindness, sympathy, patience; or to be honest human decency [oxymoron]. Especially after years of hiding from the interactions for fear that this EXACT thing would happen. I don’t know man. I almost lost my life. I am not gonna do anything that doesn’t make me happy anymore. I can’t spiritually afford it.” Of course, like Doja Cat threatening to quit music back in 2022, it’s unlikely that Halsey will really stop making music. Unlike Spears, who genuinely seems committed to preserving what’s left of her sanity by avoiding the music business like the plague.

    As for Halsey’s attempt at doing “Lucky” justice, let’s just say that, on “Without Me” (a video during which Halsey also has an abusive relationship displayed by intense arguing [with a G-Eazy lookalike, of course]), the singer incorporates a lyric from Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River.” Specifically, “You don’t have to say just what you did/I already know/I had to go and find out from them.” That Halsey chooses to recreate the most affronting moment from the single vis-à-vis Timberlake’s false narrative about how Spears cheated on him makes her, frankly, unworthy of covering any Brit song. No matter how much she’s touted herself as a fan.

    And so, while Halsey wanted to make a “moving” track/“pay homage” to Britney and the 2000s, it’s hard to feel much for it when all it does is take the musical backing of Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be” (though some insist Monica’s “Angel of Mine”) and pairs it with the chorus of “Lucky.” Leaving little of Halsey to be found.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Trump Brings Back the Worst of the 80s

    Trump Brings Back the Worst of the 80s

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    Although some could argue that Ronald Reagan’s oppressive regime in the 1980s is part of what fueled better pop culture than the schlock of the moment, one thing that could never be improved was Donald Trump. A man who did become part of the pop cultural lexicon of that era despite being a New York-confined Patrick Bateman type. For whatever reason (apart from The Art of the Deal), he managed to infiltrate the mainstream consciousness—more than likely because, in those days, it was the height of “aspirational” to be rich. Not that it still isn’t, it’s just more “cloaked” behind “earnest,” “let’s save the planet” messaging.

    Trump, obviously, never gave a fuck about that. And still doesn’t. Nor did he ever care about reading, though he did feign being very taken with the “excellent” Tom Wolfe during both men’s heyday. “Excellent” was the word he used to describe the quintessential 80s author in a 1987 interview with Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden when asked what books he was reading. But, of course, 1) he wasn’t actually reading any and 2) Trump couldn’t resist the urge to ultimately say, “I’m reading my own book because I think it’s so fantastic, Tom.” That book was the blatantly ghostwritten The Art of the Deal, released, incidentally, in the month that followed The Bonfire of the Vanities landing on bookshelves everywhere. Indeed, that was the main reason Trump was on the show.

    Oddly, Trump’s book (an oxymoron, to be sure) was the thing that made him become a household name in America, as opposed to just being limited to the niche jurisdiction of New York City and certain parts of New Jersey. As for his abovementioned interview, some have speculated that Bret Easton Ellis used this bizarre moment for Bateman/American Psycho inspiration. For it does smack of Bateman saying whatever the fuck comes to his mind just to see if anyone’s actually paying attention (e.g., saying he’s into “murders and executions mostly” instead of “mergers and acquisitions”). A moment where, in one instant Trump is declaring he’s well-versed in all literature Wolfe but hasn’t yet read The Bonfire of the Vanities, and, in the next, claiming to be reading Wolfe’s “last book.” Which would have been, what else, The Bonfire of the Vanities. He certainly wasn’t talking about From Bauhaus to Our House. And yet, even when caught in a lie, Trump always counted on touting generalities with confidence as a means to deflect from his total lack of knowledgeability.

    So it is that he keeps repeating such generalities as, “He’s a great author, he’s done a beautiful job” and “The man has done a very, very good job.” Finally, realizing that there might be some people out there not falling for his bullshit, he relies on the excuse, “I really can’t hear with this earphone by the way.” (Or, as Mariah would put it, “I can’t read suddenly.”) Trump, in this and so many other ways, has brought back the “art” of the flagrant lie-con that was popularized by some of the 80s’ most notorious swindlers, like David Bloom and Jim Bakker. Everyone wanting to adhere to the “fake it till you make it” philosophy so beloved by the U.S., and which it was essentially founded upon. A “philosophy” that Trump has taken “to heart” his entire life. Except for the fact that, as Tony Schwartz, the true writer of The Art of the Deal, eventually said, Trump doesn’t actually have a heart. More specifically, “Trump is not only willing to lie, but he doesn’t get bothered by it, doesn’t feel guilty about it, isn’t preoccupied by it. There’s an emptiness inside Trump. There’s an absence of a soul. There’s an absence of a heart.”

    And it can be argued that this absence began to extend to the collective of America in a more noticeable way than ever during the Decade of Excess. Uncoincidentally, it was the decade when neoliberalism came back into fashion in a manner as never seen before, courtesy of the “laissez-faire” policies of Reagan and, in the UK, Margaret Thatcher. With such an emphasis on “me first” and “getting ahead at any cost,” it was no wonder that a man like Trump, emblematic of the Wall Street monstrosity that would come to be embodied by Gordon Gekko, was so “revered.” His “lifestyle” coveted. Of course, it was harder then to debunk myths, like the idea that anything about Trump was “self-made.”

    In the backdrop (or foreground, depending on who you ask) of Trump and Reagan representing the worst of the 80s, there were, needless to say, so many amazing things about that decade: the birth of MTV, and with it, a new generation of visual artists (including the 1958 Trinity, Madonna Prince and Michael Jackson), Square Pegs, Golden Girls, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, They Live, E.T., Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, Footloose (a whole rash of dancing movies, really), any John Hughes movie, the eradication of smallpox, the aerobics craze and Jane Fonda’s Workout, Pac-Man (and the rise of video games in general, culminating in the release of Game Boy in 1989), the early days of the internet and personal computers, the first female vice presidential candidate (Geraldine Ferraro), the fall of the Berlin Wall… So many great, memorable things that should outshine the ickier moments today—like the rampant homophobia in response to AIDS, the Challenger explosion, Irangate, the Chernobyl disaster, New Coke, the rise of the yuppie, the death of vinyl (though it would have the last laugh) and George H.W. Bush managing to win the 1988 election so as to take more “Reaganomics” policies into the 90s.

    And now, Trump wants to bring all the worst of the decade back. The homophobia, the religious overtones (complete with satanic panic), rampant misogyny, the worship of money, the rollback of environmental regulations and, maybe most affronting of all, Hulk Hogan. The latter, like Trump, experienced his own heyday in the 80s, when interest in pro wrestling and the WWE reached an all-time crescendo. And, also like Trump, Hogan has a reputation for, let’s say, embellishing (read: fabricating) his lore. Because he found his success by being an over-the-top wrestler, Hogan never seemed inclined to shed his performative persona. As a result, many will remain forever haunted by Hogan at the RNC a.k.a. Trump rally ripping his shirt off to reveal a Trump/Vance tank top as he screamed, “Let Trumpamania [unclear why he wouldn’t just say ‘Trump Mania,’ but anyway] run wild brother! Let Trumpamania rule again!”

    As many pointed out, it was like seeing the plot of Idiocracy fully realized. A trajectory that can now be rightfully pinned on the “ideals” of the 80s. For while it was the best of times, it was also the worst of times—and those are coming back with a vengeance if Trump manages to win the presidency yet again. On the plus side though, it seems that CDs are making a comeback to align with this potential return to the Decade of Greed.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The First Rom-Com to Spring From One of the Ultimate Conspiracy Theories: Fly Me to the Moon

    The First Rom-Com to Spring From One of the Ultimate Conspiracy Theories: Fly Me to the Moon

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    As more and more movies seem to be returning to the past as a means to avoid how conflict-free a script can become thanks to modern technology, Fly Me to the Moon is among the latest to join the ranks of recent “period pieces”—which, technically, even extends to a movie like Longlegs. The Rose Gilroy-written film goes slightly further back than the latter though, taking audiences to 1969, in the months leading up to the hype and anticipation of surrounding the moon landing.

    In Gilroy’s narrative (directed by Greg Berlanti), all the buildup and excitement are a result of Kelly Jones’ (Scarlett Johansson) sudden involvement, tapped by a shadowy government operative named Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to work the previously nonexistent “PR angle” of the project. After all, the U.S. was in a dark time (as usual), with constantly-playing, harrowing images from the Vietnam War on the news, in addition to the rash of assassinations and protests turned violent by police subjugation.

    It’s with this in mind that Jones, a “shark” of an ad agency “man,” views the moon landing as an opportunity to refocus the public’s attention on something more positive. To see, once again, the “promise” of America and its potential (sort of like Beyoncé with her Olympics commercial). Not to mention reminding various Congress members that there was once a time when John F. Kennedy’s “greatest wish” (apart from fucking as many women as possible) was also theirs—as opposed to a bane to their other, more pressing budgetary concerns. Of course, it’s easy to support a lofty goal when it’s hot off the presses of relating to a collective American fear: “losing” to the Russians (a.k.a. letting communists dominate the Space Race). A peak concern (not that it still isn’t) during this period in U.S. history, when the Cold War incited manifold actions that were often dubious in nature.

    As for Kelly, she’s been described as a Don Draper type (call her Don Draper with a pussy instead of a pair) mixed with a dash of Frank Abagnale Jr. (as rendered by Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can). Gilroy (who, yes, is related to the writer Gilroys, Dan [her father], Tony [her uncle] and Frank D. [her grandfather]—in addition to being the daughter of Rene Russo) herself told The Hollywood Reporter, “Don Draper was absolutely a part of the conversation. Leo’s character in Catch Me If You Can was another character in the conversation. So Don Draper was totally an inspiration, and that scene of Kelly with the belly was actually in the first fifteen pages that I wrote on spec to win the job.”

    Kelly’s inherent conning abilities aren’t entirely her fault, of course. In addition to the expected traumatic backstory, being a woman with ambition at that time meant having to play a bit of “hardball” (or “give ’em blue balls,” in her case). In short, acting the way men do all the time, but with far more subtlety about it. Well, sort of.

    If you asked Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), the launch director for Apollo 11 at Kennedy Space Center, he wouldn’t say Kelly was subtle at all. In fact, he’d probably say she was about as subtle as a rocket launch. But before he finds out that she’s the “PR girl” from New York, Kelly very nearly launches his rocket when they first meet at Wolfie’s Restaurant—an institution on the Cocoa Beach scene. The two have a quintessential meet-cute (befitting of the era that Fly Me to the Moon is set in) involving Kelly setting her notebook on fire without being aware of it.

    Because the two already shared a flirtatious glance, when Cole approaches to tell her, “Uh, Miss, you’re on fire,” she replies, “Very original. No, I do not wanna stop, drop and roll with you.” But of course she does. And Cole himself makes no secret about being attracted to her, confessing as much before saying that despite this, he can’t pursue such feelings. He then leaves Wolfie’s, assuming he’ll never run into her again. Naturally, what makes a complete, truly effective meet-cute is a case of mistaken or unknown identity. Hence, when Kelly walks into Kennedy Space Center soon after their initial meeting, Cole is suddenly much less charmed (even though one can imagine Kelly wielding the Gracie Hart [Sandra Bullock] taunt, “You think I’m gorgeous, you want to kiss me, you want to hug me”).

    With the crux of the film’s “chutzpah” coming from the way they increasingly butt heads, by the end of the second act, that shtick gives way to a different “problem” angle for the film: Moe tasks Kelly with creating a fake version of the moon landing (and yes, Stanley Kubrick is alluded to as a potential director) in case things don’t quite work out with the real deal (a faulty transmission, etc.). Obviously, this is only going to contribute to the pile of lies she’s told to Cole, therefore making it even harder for him to accept her when the truth comes out (sort of like Josie Geller [Drew Barrymore] with Sam Coulson [Michael Vartan] in Never Been Kissed).

    Eventually, her conscience gets the better of her, and she decides to confess what’s going on to Cole after she’s already gotten a diva-rific director, Lance Vespertine (Jim Rash), from her former agency to create the footage. The reaction is as expected, with the usual third-act waiting period for Cole to finally come around. But Fly Me to the Moon, in the end, isn’t as much about a budding romance between two people as it is about America’s budding romance with conspiracy theories in the modern era. Particularly as the Nixon administration would go on to prove that mistrust in institutions ought to be the norm, not the exception. A conviction that’s only become more fortified in the decades since Watergate.

    Fly Me to the Moon offers a “light-hearted romp” with a conspiracy theory-related narrative as the backdrop, but, more often than not, it’s pretty much impossible to make light of the behaviors that stem from staunch conspiracy theorists (see: Pizzagate, the 2020 election was “stolen” and anything else related to QAnon). In this regard, Fly Me to the Moon truly does feel like a 60s-era film in that it gives the viewer enough credit to assume they’ll have a sense of humor about this sort of thing rather than taking it all too seriously.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Beyoncé’s Most Political Year Yet

    Beyoncé’s Most Political Year Yet

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    Beyoncé has been on her “Yeehaw, America!” tip from the very start of the year. With a country music album (Cowboy Carter) and a cover that features her in full-blown “Americana gear/regalia,” Beyoncé seemed determined to hold fast to her “ideals” of the U.S. even as it became increasingly apparent that Donald “Cheeto” Trump still had a strong chance of winning the election—even after everything that went down (insurrections, indictments, hush money, you name it). Especially because of the doubts cast on Joe Biden’s “mental competency” (even if Trump’s is hardly a “notch above”).

    And then, for a while, people seemed to forget about Beyoncé and her country foray. There were so many albums afterward, from Taylor’s The Tortured Poets Department to Dua’s Radical Optimism to Billie’s Hit Me Hard and Soft to Charli’s Brat. Even Megan Thee Stallion and Ice Spice have released new records in the time since Cowboy Carter vaguely dominated the chart. So maybe something activated within Beyoncé to remind her that she needed to reclaim her place in the spotlight—indeed, use her star power to invoke political change. It started with granting Kamala Harris permission to use Lemonade’s “Freedom” for her ad campaign. And then, as if that weren’t enough, Beyoncé jumped in for a Team USA Olympics ad that was aired the same week.

    As most people are aware by now, the Olympics remains one of the most politically fraught milieus…in spite of its cries of being a “source of unity.” Indeed, it can often become a political hotbed (e.g., Americans boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and, four years later, Russians boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles—these two cities also appropriately representing polar opposite ideals). 2024 is no different, especially with the ongoing invasion of Palestine by Israel, as well as the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. But obviously, Beyoncé has much less interest in that than she does in what’s going on “in her own backyard.” And what’s going on, of course, is the 2024 presidential race.

    While some might feel that, with Kamala Harris as the frontrunner for taking on Donald Trump in lieu of Joe Biden, there’s no competition now, such thinking would be a severe overestimation of what America is “really about.” And that, of course, is what makes Trump still have a good chance of winning. With this in mind, the commercial Beyoncé participated in is rife with political undertones. Reworking “Ya Ya” from Cowboy Carter (a song that actually would have worked more effectively in Harris’ campaign ad), Beyoncé appears in yet another “Yeehaw, America!” getup (Western excess at its “finest”)—her very expensive-looking boots bedecked with glittery Olympic rings in addition to red, white and blue flourishes. She’s also wearing a sparkly American flag cowboy hat and a leotard with the word “USA” emblazoned across the chest (and yes, the crotch/waist part of it also has an American flag pattern). Never mind that people who love draping the American flag on themselves usually tend to be conservative rednecks (sort of like Lana Del Rey, who cosplays that persona). Beyoncé wants to prove otherwise. That even “liberals” can be garishly over the top when it comes to their patriotism.

    The singer quickly gets to the point vis-à-vis the subtext of what’s at stake for this election. She wants to remind the viewers at home that America isn’t as white as it would often like to believe. Or rather, as white as conservatives would like to “keep” it. So it is that Beyoncé touts to a montage of multicolored faces, “Get a look at America, y’all. These hopes and dreams, these superstars that represent us. The people of this big, bold, beautiful, complicated nation. All rooting together for them.” Of course, the word “complicated” feels like the biggest euphemism of all time. What she surely meant was “unapologetically racist, sexist, capitalist and jingoist.” Both Beyoncé and Jay-Z are prime examples of the unapologetic capitalist category, proving the theory that everyone becomes white once they get filthy rich. Even so, Beyoncé wants to make this commercial as “aspirational” as possible. Hence, her little characterization of it that totally glosses over why the U.S. will always be what amounts to a “failed British colony.”

    After she calls it “big, bold, beautiful and complicated,” the lyric, “You lookin’ for a new America” strategically plays in the background as the athletes are paraded. She then continues to boast, “We’ve got superstars and we’ve got legends. We’ve got big dreamers who fought their whole lives to get here. Who gave up everything, for one shot [here, she sounds like Eminem on “Lose Yourself”]. And made it. That pride and that joy, that’s what gets me about this team.” Of course, this is the sort of rhetoric that Bible Belt America actually loves to hear, even though it’s filled with white supremacists who probably considered boycotting watching the games because they’re in Gay Paris—and remember, the U.S. is the country that tried to rename French fries “freedom fries” in 2003 because of France’s (rightful) opposition to the invasion of Iraq. So yeah, let’s just say “average Americans” (the ones who are rotund and don’t have a passport) don’t really jive with France. Don’t quite “get” it. In contrast, a country like France gets everything about America. As James Baldwin put it (in relation to Black vs. white), “You never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me.” Because America is overexposed, to say the least, there is little about its “character” that isn’t known to “foreign entities.”

    Meanwhile, Beyoncé keeps prattling on with subtext, wielding her talk of “Team USA” as a timely symbol of what America itself ought to represent in this forthcoming election. Thus, she adds, “That’s what makes me believe in this team… America, give it up for Team USA. The very best of who we are. What a vision to behold. What a team to believe in.” Especially when they’re all getting paid so well while the broke asses at home continue to be fed with the lie that everyone, no matter who they are, can achieve their dreams if they just work hard.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Kamala Harris Takes Us Back To 2016 With Her Campaign Song Choice For A Pointed Reason

    Kamala Harris Takes Us Back To 2016 With Her Campaign Song Choice For A Pointed Reason

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    In sharp contrast to, say, Ronald Reagan using Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” during his 1984 campaign against the singer’s will and with a flagrant disregard for the intent behind the song, Kamala Harris actually got permission from Beyoncé to use her 2016 track from Lemonade, “Freedom,” in her first official campaign video (and throughout the campaign in general). The unveiling of the ad came swiftly after Joe Biden’s announcement that he would not be continuing in this year’s presidential race. Its message (which threw plenty of shade at Trump without ever mentioning his name), paired with the use of the song, saw Harris hit the ground running with strong momentum in her bid for the White House. Well, that and a rapid endorsement from Charli XCX declaring, “Kamala IS brat.” While that might automatically get the gays gagging (no pun intended) even more for Harris, it is always Beyoncé that makes all the difference—especially when it comes to Black women supporting Black women (even if the naysayers claim that Harris isn’t “really” Black). Because the only thing lower in currency than white men these days is white women.

    That said, Harris is pointedly taking us back to 2016 with use of this song, which was released as the fourth single from Lemonade in September, just two months before the election that came down to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The white woman with the apparently lower currency in this scenario (maybe because Trump reads as “orange” rather than white). Harris, whether intentionally or not, is, thus, harkening back to a key pop culture moment from ’16 (Lemonade was the album of that year—especially since Taylor Swift was “on break”), as though to remind voters, once again, what’s really at stake here. And that is: forking the nation over to a megalomaniacal dictator or the real-life version of Selina Meyer (skin color aside).

    Harris was already gaining traction as a viable replacement candidate for Biden, particularly as the meme furor around her “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” soundbite continued to take on a life of its own this summer (which doesn’t say a lot for what it “requires” to be popular among the “next generation”). The Veep parallel only seemed to help her cause all the more. Indeed, Harris is turning out to be the most “pop culture-centric” candidate to date (she even hangs with drag queens and lets them know she’s in on “Padam Padam”). Beyoncé is the crowning jewel of her ability to lay that claim.

    And, even though Harris could have chosen one of Beyoncé’s more recent songs from Cowboy Carter (including “Ya Ya,” which features the lyric, “My family live and died in America, hm/Good ol’ USA/Whole lotta red in that white and blue, huh/History can’t be erased, ooh/You lookin’ for a new America?/Are you tired, workin’ time and a half for half the pay?/Ya-ya/I just pray that we don’t crash, keep my Bible on the dash/We gotta keep the faith”), she opted for the more well-known, more musically accessible “Freedom.” Not just because it’s become the 2010s version of a 1960s-era civil rights anthem, but because it is part of the 2016 time capsule.

    Almost ten years on, it seems unfathomable that the U.S. should still be in exactly the same place: pitting a female candidate against Donald Trump. Harris, in this subtle (or overt) way, appears to be driving home that point, reminding the American people that it is still possible to make the same mistake twice. That the few short months leading up to this year’s November election are critical in determining the trajectory of the country. A “last best chance” for real, if you will. As her ad phrases it, “In this election, we each face a question: what kind of country do we want to live in? There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate. But us? We choose something different. We choose freedom.” And at that moment, the booming sound of Beyoncé’s voice arrives, declaring, “Freedom, freedom/I can’t move/Freedom, cut me loose/Freedom, freedom/ Where are you?/‘Cause I need freedom too

    Throughout the montage, Harris covers all the “Democrat gold” bases, from an Indian family sitting at a table together laughing to people waving rainbow flags. She then provides the lofty voiceover, “The freedom not just to get by, but get ahead [though we all know that’s not possible with capitalism]. The freedom to be safe from gun violence [right]. The freedom to make decisions about your own body [maybe]. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty [ha!]. Where we can all afford health care [an even bigger laugh]. Where no one is above the law [cue the image of Trump]. We believe in the promise of America and we’re ready to fight for it. Because when we fight, we win.” This sentiment about Americans having a fierce “can-do” attitude that extends to never backing down when it comes to achieving their goals is an old myth, but still, apparently, an effective one.

    The ad then concludes with Bey’s lyrics, “I’ma keep runnin’ ‘cause a winner don’t quit on themselves.” It’s precisely that type of saying that gets believers in the American dream real wet, of course. This idea that everyone can get “a piece” if they work harder, sweat harder. Even though we live in a time when the notion of becoming rich is all about how “easy” it is (a.k.a. through virality), and that you don’t actually need any skills or talent at all.

    Branded by Rolling Stone as “one of the most striking political statements of [Beyoncé’s] career,” “Freedom” was also used as an anthem during the George Floyd protests of 2020 (another election year). But it’s a song straight outta 2016, which, if all goes accordingly, should spark enough people’s memories to go in the opposite direction of how that election turned out. Not that anything about the electoral college setup has changed since then…

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • It’s All Coming Back to the Audience Now, Or: Céline Dion: The Ultimate Athlete at the Olympics

    It’s All Coming Back to the Audience Now, Or: Céline Dion: The Ultimate Athlete at the Olympics

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    During the opening of I Am: Céline Dion, the gut-wrenching, Irene Taylor-directed documentary about the singer’s rare medical condition, Stiff Person Syndrome, an interview with “vintage” Dion is shown. She’s still in her early career and therefore still more versed in (Canadian) French when she says with a heavy accent, “My dream is to be international star and to be able to sing all my life.” It’s an immediately bittersweet introduction, for viewers already know that Dion has been felled by her condition for the past four years, not performing live since 2020, when she managed to round out her Courage World Tour in New Jersey (a tour plagued—pun intended—by Covid-19 shutdowns and, then, her illness). So maybe, if nothing else, Dion decided she needed to perform again so that the last place she sang wouldn’t be in New Jersey, but a milieu more befitting of her glamor and caliber.

    Thus, as she put it, if she was going to perform again, it ought to be at the Olympics in Paris. The symbolism is clear, of course. This is the woman who has been a “vocal athlete” (as Kelly Clarkson called her) for her entire life. And training to perform again for this particular appearance was nothing if not a marathon. One that has been dogged by so many physical setbacks that have, in turn, caused emotional lows that then feed those physical setbacks anew in a proverbial vicious cycle.

    For someone like Dion to be unable to use her voice—as though the Sea Witch (a.k.a. Ursula) ripped it out of her like a soul—is unimaginable. For it is the entire essence of her being, her literal raison d’être. As she also remarked in I Am: Céline Dion, “Music. I miss it a lot. But also…the people. I miss them, you know?” In another “vintage” interview clip in the documentary, Dion is shown saying that performing is like a drug, complete with the rush of the audience and the energy that they give her. The life that they literally breathe into her with their presence and energy. She also adds, “When you have the soul of an artist…artist one day, artist always. You can’t live without it.” I Am: Céline Dion gives a snapshot of how challenging and, yes, depressing it is for her to do just that—taking a break from her usual career rigors to focus on improving her health. Plus, spending more time with her twins, Eddy and Nelson. While she seems to enjoy the latter, it doesn’t do much to mitigate the physical and emotional pain caused by her condition. A disorder so rare it only happens to one in a million people. And while Dion is a one in a million talent, she certainly never wanted that to extend into a health condition.

    In the documentary, she gives a sample of what her voice sounds like with the drawbacks of SPS, breaking down crying after hearing it go all out of control. Not being able to make her vocals do what she wants them to. “I don’t want people to hear that,” she wails. Which is another large part of why she stopped singing. Anything less than perfection, to Dion, is not worth delivering to the public. As Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) said to her at the end of the “Ashes” music video, “You’re at an eleven. We need to get you down to a five, five and a half, tops. Just phone it in.” Dion ripostes, “Listen, this thing only goes to eleven. So beat it, Spider-Man.”

    And she was definitely “at eleven” for her rendition of Édith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour,” dramatically delivered from the Eiffel Tower, just beneath the five signature Olympic rings that have been placed on the structure in honor of the games. Wearing a sparkling white evening gown (Dior, naturally) suited for a Vegas residency, Dion proved what she said (and then some) in I Am: Céline Dion: “I’m working hard with my sports medicine therapist every day to build back my strength and my ability to perform again.” Her drive to perform is part of what has helped her combat, as much as possible, being totally debilitated by her condition, declaring, “All I know is singing, it’s what I’ve done all my life. And it’s what I love to do the most.”

    Audiences could see that love on full display the night of July 26th, a rain-soaked evening that was dogged by other behind-the-scenes issues (including a bomb threat near Parc des Princes ahead of a soccer match between Israel and Mali and a strategic, widespread arson attack on high-speed French rail lines). But as Dion delivered Piaf’s powerful words in French (e.g., “Mon amour, puisque tu m’aimes/J’irais jusqu’au bout du monde,” or, in English, “My love, since you love me/I would go to the ends of the Earth”), it was difficult to focus on anything else but the reminder of how much the world has been missing this voice from its frequency.

    One can see how much she’s missed it, too. It’s there, in Dion’s eyes, as the song comes to a close, how she’s utterly overwhelmed by being able to perform again, looking out into the black night of Paris and knowing that thousands (plus the millions watching on TV) are taking in her show(wo)manship yet again. As Céline says in I Am: Céline Dion, “It’s the performance that counts, not the song. A performance is way bigger than the song.” And this was a very big performance indeed. Monumental. For so many reasons—not least of which is the fact that Dion stayed true to herself and her fans when she promised, “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl. And I won’t stop. I won’t stop.” And, in returning, she chose a song that has a unifying lyric at a time when the world has never seemed less united: “Dieu réunit ceux qui s’aiment” a.k.a. “God unites those who love each other” (this belted out in a peak “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” manner and composition, complete with Dion’s chignon). While Piaf might have been referring to the love of her life who died in a plane crash, Dion, here, is referring to the audience she’s been separated from for far too long.

    And she’s trained and conditioned herself for these past years, like an Olympic athlete, in order to be with them again. As she pronounced on 1999’s “That’s The Way It Is,” “When you want it the most/There’s no easy way out/When you’re ready to go/And your heart’s left in doubt/Don’t give up on your faith/Love comes to those who believe it/And that’s the way it is.” Indeed, that’s exactly the way it was for her grand return, one that didn’t disappoint. Even if some thought that the weather did.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Mondo Appropriato #7: Sabrina Carpenter Promoting the Idea That Americans Are Too Flaccid For Espresso to the Point Where Knocking Back a Few Would Cause Them to Hallucinate

    Mondo Appropriato #7: Sabrina Carpenter Promoting the Idea That Americans Are Too Flaccid For Espresso to the Point Where Knocking Back a Few Would Cause Them to Hallucinate

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    In a series called Mondo Appropriato, Culled Culture examines how “on the nose” something is in the pop cultural and/or political landscape.

    As the Olympics kicks of this weekend, it bears noting that, thus far, the most “iconic” thing about it has been Sabrina Carpenter’s somewhat random promotion for the event (sorry, Paris Hilton). While, sure, positioning her in a Parisian café (which is probably just a backlot in Burbank) drinking espresso makes sense because of her hit single of the same name, it really doesn’t have much pertinence apart from that. Nonetheless, the setup is that Carpenter is reading a newspaper (because, apparently, that’s how “quaint” Americans think Paris is) at an outdoor table when an animated blue bird (one that looks not unlike the former Twitter logo) flies to Carpenter’s table and starts chirping at her.

    Rather than being annoyed or frightened, Carpenter is apparently so keyed up on espresso that she now has the ability to speak “Bird,” responding, “Well hello there, handsome.” The bird chirps again. “Why yes, I am Sabrina Carpenter.” Chirp chirp. “Oh thank you, so nice to meet a fan.” Chirp chirp. “Okay, settle down. We just met.” Chirp chirp. “What am I doing in Paris? Isn’t it obvious? The Olympics.” Chirp chirp. “The amazing opening ceremony on the Seine, Simone’s epic comeback, the USA-Australia rivalry in the pool and the world’s fastest man and woman, Noah [Lyles] and Sha’Carri (Richardson), racing for Team USA—I’ve never been more excited for anything in my life.” She’s obviously not counting every time Barry Keoghan drops trou.

    The bird, now standing in between six cups of espresso after listening to her one-woman rant, starts chirping more frenetically than ever, prompting Carpenter to smilingly say, “You need to behave yourself,” laughingly adding, “You’re crazy!” But, of course, the only crazy one in this scenario is her, as she’s having both visual and auditory hallucinations (the latter tends to be more common when it comes to imbibing too much espresso). Thanks to what, a few paltry cups of espresso? Of course, that notion doesn’t help to debunk the stereotype that most Europeans already have about Americans when it comes to coffee: that they’re little bitches who can’t handle their caffeine and wouldn’t know what good café tasted like if Alfonso Bialetti himself poured it down their throats. Their “precious” constitutions apparently limited only to being able to withstand high amounts of processed foods (including, of course, burgers, fries and hot dogs). And beer. But not even the hearty German shit—just the watered-down Millers and Buds they knock back without a second thought (the same goes for American coffee portions, which, although offering more in quantity, are never as effective as the small, undiluted cups that Europeans drink—hence, the American inability to “withstand” them, as they insist they’re getting “high”).

    Watching Carpenter “hallucinate” on this drug—and yes, it is arguably the world’s most socially acceptable one apart from the internet—it’s not as though the premise is totally unbelievable. Especially since people who suffer from stress already are more prone to being affected by some of the more profound side effects of caffeine. And what could be more stressful than being a famous singer?—particularly a famous female singer who has to worry about what she looks like all the time, lest an unflattering image makes the cut for internet immortality. Plus, she also has to work late (therefore, needs the caffeine to stay up, n’est-ce pas?). So, bottom line: stress. And for once, the pay grade actually matches the stress level. Which is why Carpenter taking un petit coffee break is simultaneously healing and hurting. Indeed, a better concept for her would have been to spoof the cardboard beds in the Olympic Village with “Please Please Please,” performing the same kind of “acrobatic” (that’s code for: kama sutra-related) moves that many of the athletes have been testing out for themselves on social media to see if the beds can withstand certain, let’s say, “rigorous” nighttime activities.

    Unfortunately, she went for the less tailored, more random option (if this were an Olympics in Italy, then, sure, playing up the “Espresso” angle would make more sense, but Paris doesn’t exactly have a renowned reputation for the beverage in such a way). And so, as she giggles to herself thinking that she’s giggling with a bird, the camera then pans out to show two waiters, one of whom tells the other in French, “I think she’s had enough espresso.” Additional translation: “Stop giving the dainty American the ‘hard’ stuff she can’t handle.” Unless you want a lawsuit on your hands because they find you responsible for giving too much of what they specifically asked for. After all, that’s that them Americans.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJwmx7amBI

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “Daddy! Mommy! Save Me From the Hell of Living!”: Longlegs

    “Daddy! Mommy! Save Me From the Hell of Living!”: Longlegs

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    As the 90s seem to be taking hold of the box office this summer (with Twister also reanimating as Twisters), it’s only right that someone should take a stab at what amounts to an updated version of The Silence of the Lambs and Seven. That person is none other than the son of Anthony “Norman Bates” Perkins himself, Osgood Perkins (formerly known as “Oz”). And yes, being a child of such a particular kind of actor has undoubtedly influenced Perkins’ overall “spooky” bent in terms of generally opting to make creepy films (some of his previous ones include The Blackcoat’s Daughter, The Girl in the Photographs, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and, more commercially, Gretel & Hansel). That in addition to playing “Young Norman Bates” in 1983’s Psycho II. But, obviously, more than anything, the lives and deaths of Perkins’ parents would be enough to inspire him to pursue this genre.

    It was already bad enough that Anthony, his long-closeted father (though, of course, it was an open secret in Hollywood), died of AIDS in 1992 (along with Robert Reed a.k.a. “Mr. Brady”), but then, nine years later, his mother, model/actress Berry Berenson, died in one of the planes that was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. Really, shit doesn’t get more horrific than that in terms of parent-related trauma and loss. Which is exactly why one of the most standout lines from Longlegs is: “Daddy! Mommy! Save me from the hell of living!” This delivered hauntingly and, it goes without saying, memorably by Nicolas Cage in the titular satanic killer role.

    As for the nickname, well, it pertains to “Longlegs” approaching children with a life-size replica doll of themselves and, instead of bending down to meet them at their eye level, saying, “It seems I wore my long legs today.” The “jovial” saying usually directed at children (especially in a pre-twenty-first century era) is, thus, turned on its ear (or leg)—rendered bone-chilling in a way that one never thought possible, and all done so simply, too.

    Indeed, “simplicity” is the keyword for this film. As Perkins put it to The Wrap, in terms of conceptualization, “The basic step is to pick something that’s true. Write to a theme that’s a true theme for me. In the case of this, that true theme was, it’s possible for parents to lie to their children and tell them stories. It’s very basic and easily understandable. If you want to start building projects that way, it should be simple.” What builds out of that simplicity is a haunting, unforgettable story centered on a young FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, who, like Perkins, is also known for making mainly horror movies). Tasked with tracking an untrackable killer in the already ominous setting of the Pacific Northwest (rendering the supplemental Twin Peaks nod complete), Harker falls as far down the rabbit hole as Clarice Starling ever did. And, among one of her more unique skills (besides being what Karen [Amanda Seyfried] from Mean Girls would call “kind of psychic” and having a “fifth sense”), Harker is extremely well-versed in the Bible. A knowledgeability that leads her to decode Longlegs’ formerly undecodable letters to the police. Accordingly, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), Lee’s superior, is starting to understand why he enlisted her to take on this case.

    Alas, the case quickly starts to take her on instead, permeating Lee’s entire life until it leads her down the path of having to question her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt, who, incidentally was in Twin Peaks: The Return), about Longlegs’ appearance in Lee’s childhood decades prior, at a time when Marc Bolan and T. Rex would have been all the rage. As far as Longlegs is concerned though, T. Rex remains “king” in his world (well, apart from Satan) as he constantly belts out chilling ditties of his own in the style of Bolan. This, of course, was already foreshadowed by the opening title card featuring the “Get It On (Bang A Gong)” quote, “Well you’re slim and you’re weak/You’ve got the teeth of a hydra upon you/You’re dirty, sweet and you’re my girl.” “His girl,” unfortunately, extends to many children who grow up not fully aware that they’re under his spell (in this sense, there’s more than a touch of Charles Manson [no stranger to satanism and the occult] to the Longlegs character). Chief among them being Carrie Ann Camera (Kiernan Shipka, who also starred in Perkins’ The Blackcoat’s Daughter), the sole survivor of one of Longlegs’ killings, which always follow the pattern of infiltrating a family’s home and miraculously getting the father to slaughter his wife and children, with no signs of outside force anywhere.

    With Lee’s gift for what some might call “supernatural” intuition (though not quite to the extent of Phoebe Halliwell’s [Alyssa Milano] premonitory abilities in Charmed), Perkins adds another element into his elixir of ideas that are often incorporated into different sub-genres of thriller/horror films. As he described, “This movie is very pop. And it starts with reproducing Silence of the Lambs. If it’s pop art, then you want to adhere to certain indicators. And so the nineties became an easy indicator that we were in the realm of Silence of the Lambs and Seven. We were wanting to sit alongside the good ones and invite the audience into a safe space.” Of course, what’s also important about the nineties as the film’s backdrop is that it makes it much more difficult for law enforcement to track a killer without the modern technology of today. And yes, even the Longlegs of 2024 would be forced to have a phone, freakshow or not.

    But no matter what decade Longlegs existed/came of age in, he seems the type that was doomed to be a failure. And it is precisely that failure that turns him toward darkness, toward channeling his “talents” toward killing. Like the aforementioned Manson, Longlegs might not have become a satanic serial killer if his music career had taken off. As Perkins speculated, “Longlegs probably wanted to be a guitar player in a glam rock band called Longlegs. One day, the Devil started sounding through his headphones and through his records in the Judas Priest sense.”

    More than being a movie about a devil/glam rock-worshiping serial killer that targets children as the weak link for entry (a.k.a. possession), it is a movie that speaks to the ways in which parents lie to their children from an early age. All under the pretense of “protecting” them, of course (even from music like the kind T. Rex made)—but, in the end, that protection usually turns out to be a disservice. Especially as the child, in their “grown-up” years has to learn how to actually grow up after being insulated from harsh reality for too long. Again, Perkins knows all about this, better than most people, in fact. To that point, he would also state of this particular theme in the film, “It’s a bad world, and when Ruth finally comes out with her truth and tells the story, it makes me think about my own parents. That resonates as the most dynamic section of the movie; the revelation.” No biblical pun intended…probably.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • In The Future, Madison Beer Will Make A Song Called “15 Minutes”

    In The Future, Madison Beer Will Make A Song Called “15 Minutes”

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    Andy Warhol was famously (and falsely) attributed with the often misquoted aphorism, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” But what no prophecy could have predicted back then is that, “In the future, Madison Beer will make a song called ‘15 Minutes.’” And that she has, with a video to go with it, co-directed, as usual, by Beer and Aerin Moreno. Granted, Beer’s song isn’t a commentary on pervasive “fame,” so much as how quickly one can fall down the rabbit hole when it comes to lust/love/attraction.

    Like many of Beer’s videos, it has a dreamy, surreal sort of quality, with the premise centered around Beer stumbling upon an escape room in the middle of nowhere. And, also like many of her videos (including the Jennifer’s Body-referencing “Make You Mine”), there is a certain cinematic air, complete with the action movie-ish titles that spell out her name and song at the beginning. A beginning that opens on Beer standing in a desolate landscape before she whips around to face toward the audience, staring at something else in the distance. That something being none other than the escape room that will dominate the entire “plot” of the video.

    As Beer finds herself being inexplicably pulled toward the structure (which looks like the type of place the Unabomber would feel right at home in), she sings the appropriate lyrics, “I couldn’t stop myself, I couldn’t help myself/This isn’t like me, can’t you tell?” It’s then that she gets closer to the ramshackle, bearing a sign that reads, “Got 15 Minutes? Try Our Escape Room.” It comes across like that meme of a creepy “black hole” of an underpass with the words “Free Drugs” and an arrow graffiti’d above it as a means to lure someone vulnerable and naïve enough. Beer, apparently, is just such a type.

    Continuing to sing, “Show me around this place/Take me in your embrace/It feels so right but ain’t it strange?” while getting closer to opening the door, the tension mounts as she leads up to the big breakout of the song (its chorus), prefacing it with, “In this moment all I know is…” before the LOSTBOY and Leroy Clampitt-produced rhythm picks up in time for Beer to belt out, “Fifteen minutes ago, I was layin’ in bed/Then I had a crazy thought in my head/So I took the keys and got in the car/Don’t know how I got here, but baby, here we are.”

    Speaking to an attraction so intense that she can’t fight or deny it—and is therefore unwittingly pulled to the object of her desire like a moth to a flame—Beer wields the metaphor of the escape room literally as she battles to free herself from this potent attraction. Even though, to paraphrase Radiohead, she did it to herself, it’s true, and that’s what really hurts.

    After resisting the wind that tried to push her back and warn her not to go any farther, the scene cuts to Beer suddenly being in the back of a truck that looks like it’s driving through that part of the L.A. River near the Sixth Street Bridge. Pulled back out for a moment to the exterior of the house, the sign informs her, “Your 15 Minutes Starts Now,” at which time she goes back into the house where a digital clock that’s already ticked down to nine minutes left looms behind her. Her outfit has also mysteriously changed to a white cropped tee and white booty shorts that are decidedly diaper-esque. And while she initially looked anxious/frightened to enter the space, she now seems rather excited and titillated by it, holding to a random wheel as she flexes her body and then going over to a pipe (it’s a very industrial space on the inside, evidently) to rub her back against it. Who knew escape rooms could be so “sexy”? Or at least make someone feel that way…

    In the next part of the escape room, Beer this time rubs her back against a row of lockers (the closest she’ll get to Britney in “…Baby One More Time” cachet)—because what could one want to escape from more than high school? After having enough of a “moment” with the lockers, she then goes into the next room, passing an analog clock as she does so. As she searches frantically for something that she cannot name, her eyes set upon a wrench that she uses to break the square glass window at the top center of another door, reaching her arm through it to pull on the handle from the other side. Now, in the next room, the clock has gotten down to six minutes (needless to say, time is elapsed in this three-minute-twenty-two-second video).

    For whatever reason, she arches herself backwards in something like a “Spider-Man getting kissed by Mary Jane” pose before whipping back up to smash this clock with a crowbar. She then runs back through some of the spaces she was already in to find a piled rope that miraculously pulls her by the ankles at rapid speed through another hallway as the beat crescendos to its most frenetic, EDM (or Charli XCX)-sounding vibe yet. At the other side of the hallway, there appears to be an industrial fan that looks as though it might suck her right into it if she reaches the end of that part of the escape room.

    Fortunately, in keeping with the disjointed, surreal nature of the video, before she (not shit) does hit the fan, Beer and Moreno cut to her in the middle of nowhere once again. Right back where she started from. And she’s even back in the same outfit she was in before as well. Because, ostensibly, the escape room unlocks some kind of “alternate dimension” Beer—the one who gives in to her basest, most carnal instincts. For, if you’ll remember, it’s her more moralizing superego self that says at the beginning of the song, “This isn’t like me, can’t you tell?” But in the escape room, all bets are off on “playing it coy.”

    Walking and running down the deserted road after “escaping,” she bears an aura not dissimilar from the sexually satisfied one Madonna has at the end of the “Justify My Love” video (she, too, walk-runs down the hallway of the hotel while smiling and laughing). And yes, Beer offers up some kinky lyrics in that spirit as well, at one point urging, “Show me how much you care/Touch me and pull my hair/Give me emotions I can’t bear/I want you to fantasize, and/Think of it every night/Never forget I made you mine” (that last line being an overt allusion to “Make You Mine”).

    Unlike Madonna, though, Beer has the lack of impulse control that leads her straight back to the escape room when night falls, the sign outside now suggestively asking, “Try Again?” Beer then looks knowingly into the camera before the shot cuts just before we see her leaning in the direction of the entrance. This after repeating the chorus one last time—which, in some sense, evokes the Lana chorus from “Bartender” that goes, “I bought me a truck in the middle of the night/It’ll buy me a year if I play my cards right/Photo free exits from baby’s bedside/‘Cause they don’t yet know what car I drive/I’m just tryna keep my love alive.”

    To conclude the song, though, Beer takes a page out of the Kylie Minogue playbook by repeating, “La, la, la-da-di-da, la, la-da-di-da.” And yes, “la-di-da” is the best way to sum up being inexplicably under someone’s spell, drawn into their world to the point where you feel like you’re in an escape room—that’s how difficult it is to pull yourself out.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Gracie Abrams Has No Problem Being Asshole of the Year in Video for “I Love You, I’m Sorry”

    Gracie Abrams Has No Problem Being Asshole of the Year in Video for “I Love You, I’m Sorry”

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    Continuing to give listeners a taste of her “Swiftian prowess” on the songwriting front, Gracie Abrams has rolled out the second music video for a single from The Story of Us: “I Love You, I’m Sorry.” Something of a “sequel” to 2020’s “I Miss You, I’m Sorry,” Abrams is only somewhat less doleful on this particular track (which she first previewed on Instagram earlier this year, exactly four years after the release of “I Miss You, I’m Sorry”). Of course, more than apologizing to the object of her affection for hurting him and loving him (even still), she’s ultimately apologizing to herself for being silly enough to do so. But, as another Swiftian acolyte, Selena Gomez, once said, “The heart wants what it wants.” (Mind you, Woody Allen said this before her…about Soon-Yi Previn—and yes, Allen does seem like someone who would co-star in Only Murders in the Building with Gomez if he weren’t cancelled.)

    Like the first single from The Story of Us, “Risk,” the video for “I Love You, I’m Sorry” is once again directed by Abrams’ bestie and frequent co-songwriter, Audrey Hobert. Accordingly, “I Love You, I’m Sorry” offers a similar “narrative” to “Risk” in that, basically, Abrams is an absolute wreck over a guy, all while attempting, hopelessly, to “play it cool.” Except that, in the case of “I Love You, I’m Sorry,” the relationship was actually serious. Serious enough for her to still be reflecting on it while sitting on the beach two years later. For that’s where Hobert commences the story, with Abrams describing, “Two Augusts ago/I told the truth, oh/But you didn’t like it, you went home.”

    Hobert then reveals Abrams in a series of scenes during which her overall vibe echoes the lyric, “I might not feel real, but it’s okay, mm.” Her aura of “not feeling real” shows up when she’s dissociatedly drinking Aperol spritzes with friends (including Hobert), when she’s riding in the backseat of a car, when she’s in bed reading a book with a cover that reads with the generic title “Self Help” (that’s right, no hyphen)—when she’s doing, hell, just about anything. In the book-reading scene, Abrams also looks ever so slightly like Billie Eilish in her current Hit Me Hard and Soft era, but then, there’s also moments when she doesn’t look so dissimilar from Madison Beer either. All of which is to say that Abrams channels quite a few singer-songwriter types of the moment, both lyrically and aesthetically.

    Though she does seem, at the very least, to be “original” in terms of being among the few Gen Z “pop stars” to proudly display her drinking habit in full effect, cheersing the viewer with her spritz in a manner that indicates she’s gotten slightly “classier” since she was filling her wine glass to the brim with a generic red in “Risk.” Her “class” game has also been one-upped by paying slight homage to Bob Dylan’s “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine),” still every “thoughtful” female songwriter’s go-to for inspiration (followed closely by Joni Mitchell). This comes in the form of the rueful yet shrugging line, “I’ll be on a boat, you’re on a plane going somewhere, same.” In other words, as Dylan put it, “I’m just gonna let you pass/Yes, and I’ll go last/And then time will tell just who has fell/And who’s been left behind/When you go your way and I go mine.”

    If Abrams were to guess, though, it seems she thinks she’s the one who will fall, taking ownership of being the “dick” in the situation (Olivia Rodrigo would never). This much is made clear in the bridge, wherein she belts out, “You were the best, but you were the worst/As sick as it sounds, I loved you first/I was a dick, it is what it is/A habit to kick, the age-old curse/I tend to laugh whenever I’m sad/I stare at the crash, it actually works.” And yet, it’s Hobert who pushes her out of the car about midway through the video so that she can truly watch the metaphorical car crash, entering an auditorium to accept the award for Asshole of the Year. In this moment, Abrams surprises viewers by not having the boy who theoretically did her wrong take the stage, but gladly decides to do so herself, claiming the trophy and then ripping the head off of it to sing into it like a mic, confessing all her sins and still wishing that things might have been different. In another sense, Abrams also gives off the Dylan verse, “You say you’re sorry/For tellin’ me stories/That you know I believe are true/Say ya got some other/Other kind of lover/And yes, I believe you do.”

    Abrams’ version of that acknowledgement is, “That’s just the way life goes [or, as Janet would say, “That’s the way love goes”]/I like to slam doors closed/Trust me, I know it’s always about me.” This last line mirrors Taylor Swift on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” as she sings, “So tell me everything is not about me/But what if it is?” And, in another instance of her Swift-like mimicry, Abrams sings, “I push my luck, it shows/Thankful you don’t send someone to kill me.” This also paralleling Swift on “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” when she demands, “Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?”

    And so, no matter which songwriter Abrams is riffing on for “I Love You, I’m Sorry,” she’s made a video that’s at least faintly more unique than the song itself. A lament as old as the 1960s by this point. Fortunately for Abrams, the generation she’s trying to appeal to appears to have no awareness of those forebears who were already saying the same thing. In short, they think Abrams just fell out of a coconut tree.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Inside Out 2: Perhaps Even More Anti-San Francisco Than Inside Out Due to Entirely Excluding the City From the Narrative

    Inside Out 2: Perhaps Even More Anti-San Francisco Than Inside Out Due to Entirely Excluding the City From the Narrative

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    While the first Inside Out was a patently anti-San Francisco movie, the sequel has proven to perhaps be even less generous—dare one even say, actually crueler—toward the city by choosing to ignore its presence altogether. Although San Franciscans might have thought the presentation of their city couldn’t possibly be worse in the second movie than it was in the first, it has to be said that the full-stop refusal to acknowledge its existence is probably even more insulting. Because, apparently, so “non” is San Francisco at this point that the Inside Out 2 creators and animators—based, by the way, right near San Francisco “suburb” Emeryville—could barely bother to provide a few background scenes of the milieu as Riley Andersen (Kensington Tallman) is on the way to a weekend hockey camp.

    And yes, for the rest of the movie after that brief scene of Riley’s parents, Mrs. Andersen (Diane Lane) and Mr. Andersen (Kyle MacLachlan), driving her to the camp with her friends, Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), there is nary a sign of San Francisco anywhere. Unless one grasps at the straws of Riley wearing a “Bay Area Skills Camp” jersey. Although one might have anticipated more play for SF now that Riley is a teenager and is theoretically supposed to be coming into her own vis-à-vis exploring the city a little bit more independently than she used to, Inside Out 2 totally misses the opportunity to, at the very least, employ San Francisco for the task of ramping up Riley’s latest emotion to enter her puberty-fueled headspace: Anxiety.

    Of course, this being a “kids’” movie, co-screenwriters Meg LeFauve (who also co-wrote the first movie) and Dave Holstein likely didn’t want to rock the boat too much in terms of what types of “stimuli” might prompt Riley to have an anxiety flare-up. Like, say, the sight of some zombie-esque homeless people hobbling toward her at a steady clip on the sidewalk. Or overhearing her parents talk about the unaffordability of the city and how maybe they, too, should join the others who supposedly comprise what is called the “California Exodus.” Indeed, that latter threat would surely send Anxiety into overdrive, seeing as how Riley has finally gotten her bearings in her formerly new city. The last thing she would want to do now is move to Austin, Texas (where all the Californians have reportedly disappeared to).

    The total absence of any sense of place in Inside Out 2 is what marks the most noticeable change in the film’s “setup” after almost a decade has gone by. What it says probably has less to do with San Francisco and more to do with the fact that our entire existence is increasingly “lived” solely in non-places. This being the term coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé in his seminal work, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. It is in this work that Augé discusses the characteristics of the average non-place (e.g., supermarkets, airports, hotel rooms, metro stations and, in this case, hockey rinks): cold, clinical, lacking in any unique identifying characteristics. In short, it is a transitional space (sort of like adolescence itself) designed to evoke no sense of belonging whatsoever due to being devoid of any personal touches—what is known as “having character.”

    When applied to the feeling—or, rather, “non-feeling”—that San Francisco evokes in Inside Out 2, it can perhaps be interpreted “poetically” in that Riley has never truly felt as though she belongs there. And now, with her only two friends abandoning her after the summer to attend a different high school, Riley is panicking all the more about her “sense of place,” about where, exactly, she’s supposed to fit in.

    While some might say that San Francisco’s absence is “nothing personal,” or that the storyline of the sequel is intended to be less about the city and more about Riley’s fresh trials and tribulations as a teenager navigating the increasingly murky waters of friendship, it cannot be overlooked that where one lives as a teenager is a large part of what forms their emotions and identity. Needless to say, Riley would be a totally different person if she had remained in Minnesota. Excluding the more urban landscape of San Francisco from this new “snapshot” of her teenhood is, thus, an odd choice. Others still would posit that because the mind itself is the milieu in which Inside Out and Inside Out 2 take place, there’s not much need to incorporate a “real” environment. Fine, keep it “minimal” then—but don’t oust a tangible setting altogether. But, again, this likely doesn’t register with or bother that many people when taking into account that the majority is, at this juncture, well-accustomed to seeing and experiencing non-places. It just comes across as particularly shade-throwing that, now, San Francisco is a “non-place,” too. Not even worth making fun of anymore, as far as Inside Out 2 is concerned.

    In the past, there would have at least been the usual mockery about how “generic” the city has become, how “corporatized.” Not just thanks to the long-ago tech infiltration, but as a result of the collective adherence to globalization itself. Everywhere is everywhere. But, in all honesty, that’s not really true of San Francisco, which still possesses its unique, indelible aspects—not least of which is its signature topography and landmarks. And, as the usual haters would waste no time in parroting, “All the homeless people!” The seemingly lone condemnation that detractors can think of to consistently lob at the Golden City (and yes, it is golden, despite what the naysayers might quip about that gold being of the “fool’s” variety). Either that or, where conservatives are concerned, it’s “too gay.” In fact, one of its other rotating nicknames is Gay Mecca. This perhaps being yet another reason that Inside Out 2 opted to shirk San Francisco altogether during Riley’s teen years. After all, what if Riley is a lesbian? San Francisco is the perfect place to unearth such a sexual revelation. But, in terms of including SF in all its (gay) glory for a teenager, Pixar seemed to be channeling Regina George insisting, “I couldn’t have a lesbian at my party. There were gonna be girls there in their bathing suits.”

    Whatever the reason (or “non-reason”) for choosing to give San Francisco absolutely no play apart from tacking on three arbitrary exteriors (including, of course, the Golden Gate Bridge) during the credits, it seems that the opinion of the town is so low at the moment that Pixar favored largely disavowing its presence entirely. And, as Oscar Wilde said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Thus, San Francisco’s (non-)representation in Inside Out 2 is what makes the movie even harsher toward the city than Inside Out.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Inside Out 2: When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies

    Inside Out 2: When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies

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    The world was a vastly different place nine years ago, when the first Inside Out was released. Though, at the time, it might have felt like a world that was dangerous and unsafe for children to grow up and develop in, the truth is, they were probably better off doing so in 2015 than they would be in 2024 (good luck to the sociopaths that have to do that now). And so, yes, 2024 feels like the “perfect” moment to introduce a “new” emotion to Inside Out 2: Anxiety! Of course, even though nearly a decade has passed since last we saw Riley Andersen (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias in the original, and presently, Kensington Tallman), she’s still only just now turning thirteen. Better known to most parents (and teachers…or anyone else subjected to the horrors of interacting with a teenager) as: the Scary Age.

    Incidentally, “Terror” doesn’t appear as a more nuanced emotion than “Fear” in the complex range of new ones that are rolled out with a brand-new console that gets installed by the “mind workers” the night before Riley “hits puberty.” A previously uncharted era during which, suddenly, the limited range of five primary emotions—Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Disgust (Liza Lapira) and Anger (Lewis Black)—are hardly sufficient enough to convey all the confusing, disordered feelings Riley is having at any given moment now that she’s thirteen. Enter Anxiety (Maya Hawke), the key emotion freshly presented into the fray that best encapsulates all those crippling, inexplicable sentiments that go hand-in-hand with an increasing fixation on social status. Granted, Anxiety isn’t alone in terms of being part of a new burst of emotions that only get introduced once a person enters teenhood. Especially when that person is a girl.

    Thus, she is joined by Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Envy (Ayo Edebiri). For a brief instant, even a new emotion called Nostalgia (June Squibb) pops out, stylized as an old lady with glasses. But Anxiety tell her she’s much too early to be there, and she’s promptly sent away from headquarters. Unfortunately, Joy has to admit that Anxiety does seem, in contrast, to be right on time—to know much more about Riley’s new set of concerns and worries than Joy does. And yet, that doesn’t stop Joy from fretting over the fact that Anxiety is negatively impacting the meticulously crafted “Sense of Self” that Riley currently has…thanks to some clever manipulations from Joy via filing memories with unpleasant associations to the back of her mind. Which is for Riley’s “own good,” of course. In fact, all Joy wants is for Riley to think and feel that she’s that wonderful thing: a good person.

    Alas, as someone becomes a teenager, all sense of “goodness” tends to go out the window if it means interfering with how that adolescent wants to be perceived. And, no matter how much time goes by or what changes occur in technology, how a teen always wants to be perceived is: cool. Accepted. Well-liked. Best of all, popular. For while Gen Z might think such concerns went the way of the dodo after millennial teenhood, it’s still very much alive and well on an even worse scale thanks to social media and its impact on self-esteem. Riley is a victim of her own intense desire to feel embraced by an older group of girls once she learns that her best friends, Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), are going to be attending a different high school when the summer is over.

    And so, instead of seeing the hockey camp they’re invited to attend (and as the only junior highers, to boot) as an opportunity for a last hurrah together, Riley, under Anxiety’s so-called guidance, takes it as a chance to gain the favor of a popular star player named Val Ortiz (Lilimar). And, when Val actually seems to take a liking to Riley despite how awkward and socially inept she is (in the 00s, Riley is the girl who would have been freely referred to as a “spaz”), the latter can’t help but jump at the chance to “rebrand” in order to better fit in with Val and her older crew of friends.

    Horrified at the way Riley is ignoring the carefully crafted “Sense of Self” Joy worked so hard to create, she can’t understand that Anxiety is part of a larger phenomenon that comes with growing up (particularly in a world that, increasingly, prides itself on desensitizing youths): kindness and empathy being stamped out, your heart dying. This being the very accurate and eloquent phrase Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy) from The Breakfast Club wields when she laments, “When you grow up, your heart dies.” An aphorism delivered in reply to Andrew Clark’s (Emilio Estevez) question of whether or not they would become like their parents (that is to say, assholes). Allison also insists, “It’s unavoidable. Just happens.” For Riley, she might not be becoming like her wholesome, largely checked-out parents, per se, but she is becoming more impervious to the notion of “morality.” Of whether or not what’s “good” is necessarily good for her.

    Anxiety only serves to fan those flames of sociopathy, prompting Riley to do whatever it takes to achieve “her” goals (though, all along, one has to ask: are they really “hers” or merely what she thinks should be hers due to societal and peer pressures?). In this case, getting onto the Firehawks team as a freshman so that she can have a secured group of friends in her teammates, including Val. When the other girls tell Riley that Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown) always holds a scrimmage on the last day of camp and it’s what ended up getting Val on the team as a freshman, Anxiety sends Riley into peak panic mode about doing well enough the next day so that the coach puts her on the team for next year. Of course, Val tells her that all she has to do is stop stressing and “be herself.”

    In response to that notion, Envy asks Anxiety a fair (and slightly philosophical) question: “How do we be ourself if our ‘self’ isn’t ready yet?” Anxiety, ever the “problem-solver,” reacts by putting more anxiety-ridden memories into the Sense of Self bank that will supposedly propel Riley to act in a way that secures the best possible future. Naturally, what Anxiety doesn’t understand is that Riley won’t be securing much of anything if she’s a tightly-wound ball of panic that can barely function because of all her crippling worries. Nonetheless, Anxiety can’t be bothered with considering how she’s actually hurting Riley, remarking to Envy, “I wish we knew what Coach thought about us.” It’s then that, while Riley is just trying to fucking sleep that Anxiety plants the idea in her head to sneak into the coach’s office and look at the notebook where she writes down all of her “hot takes” about the players. Thus, Riley commits yet another act that goes against what Joy would call her true Sense of Self (even if it was manipulated by Joy): breaking and entering. Oh, an obtaining information that’s supposed to be “confidential” by any means necessary.

    As Anxiety has turned Riley into someone she isn’t—someone whose core Sense of Self repeats, “I’m not good enough”—Joy and her “follower emotions” finally make it to the back of Riley’s mind, where the Sense of Self Joy had originally created was exiled by Anxiety. Initially relieved to have recovered the trophy-looking structure, Joy can’t help but take notice of the literal mountain of bad memories she’s stockpiled back here, in a place that suppresses what Riley’s true self might actually be. And when she calls upon Sadness to launch them back to headquarters through the pipe Joy built to jettison those bad memories there in the first place, Anxiety manages to destroy the pipe so that Joy and co. are stuck there. Needless to say, this smacks of the same pickle Joy was in during the first Inside Out, when she got booted into the Memory Dump—a location of the mind where any memories that get deposited there are doomed to fade out for good. Feeling hopeless and defeated, she can no longer even fake a plucky attitude to the other emotions, telling them, “I don’t know how to stop Anxiety. Maybe we can’t. Maybe this is what happens when you grow up. You feel less Joy.” In other words, “When you grow up, your heart dies.”

    This is exactly why so many memes about Riley as an adult have come about in the wake of Inside Out 2. For example, Depression as an emotion stamping out all the other ones. Or alcohol being used to briefly chase the emotion of Euphoria before it quickly disappears. And yes, it’s obviously true that there’s no place for Joy in the adult mind. Her presence becoming nothing but one of those faded memories in the Memory Dump (this is perhaps why that incident in Inside Out was nothing more than foreshadowing for Joy’s inevitable disappearance during Riley’s adulthood).

    And yet, none of the adults involved in the making of Inside Out 2—and certainly none of the adults who control the system in place—would ever stop and think that perhaps there’s something very, very wrong with how it’s simply accepted that to grow up is to experience the death of Joy. The loss of “heart” a.k.a. any sense of humanity. And all in the name of getting “ahead.” As Anxiety phrased it, “It’s not about who Riley is, it’s about who she needs to be.” But why does anyone “need” to become an asshole in this life? To adhere to the subjugating “tenets” of capitalism, duh.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • When Unoriginal Rips From Unoriginal: Paris Hilton Is Very Much “Waiting For Tonight” in Her Remake of Ultra Naté’s “Free”

    When Unoriginal Rips From Unoriginal: Paris Hilton Is Very Much “Waiting For Tonight” in Her Remake of Ultra Naté’s “Free”

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    Right after the backlash against Jennifer Lopez that began in early summer—amid news that she was canceling her tour (she said for “family reasons,” everyone else said “low ticket sales”) —Galore posted a series of photos that tried to connect Charli XCX’s Brat to J. Lo’s music and videos of the past. The reaction to a question like, “Is Brat Actually J. Lo Coded?” was met, rightly so, with comments like, “How much she paid y’all to post this?,” “No. Next question,” “She wishes,” “How dare you do this to Charli,” “Stop trying to make J. Lo happen,” “This has to be rage bait” and “April Fool’s was two months ago.”

    While that “comparison” was more than a bit of a reach, the connection Hilton has to Lopez in her latest video, “I’m Free” is hard to deny. Mainly because those green lasers are a staple of the “Waiting For Tonight” video. And everyone still knows it. While Lopez herself might have lifted them from the clubs they were popular in at the time, this is the image—apart from her plunging Versace dress—that she is arguably most remembered for. What Madonna did for vogueing, J. Lo did for green laser lights, bringing them to the forefront of mainstream consciousness as never before.

    More obviously, Hilton is doing her “take” on Ultra Naté’s 1997 club banger, “Free,” a track she’s long been known to play in her go-to DJing rotation. And yes, it’s bittersweetly ironic that the song was released just a few months before she would be sent away by her parents to Provo Canyon School, that oppressive institution where she was force-fed dubious “medication” and abused in ways both physical and emotional. Fortunately though, Hilton claims she didn’t actually hear the song for the first time until she was back in New York, commenting in her “I’m Free” “press release,” “I heard it for the first time at a club in New York City shortly after being released from the Provo Canyon School where I experienced mental and physical abuse. For me, the song represents the journey of healing and finding your voice. It has served as an anthem of hope and a guiding light and I’m honored to have had the chance to create this new version.” Well, it doesn’t sound all that new, and, obviously, it doesn’t even begin to hold a candle to Ultra Naté’s original. Which also has an accompanying video that likely hits too close to home for Hilton’s experience at Provo Canyon when Ultra Naté’s appears in a skin-tight metallic gown that’s also fashioned as a straitjacket (“back then,” one could make such “ableist” commentary without risk of being lambasted).

    While “Free” burned up the dance charts, Hilton, alas, was stuck in “hell camp” from the summer of ’97 to January of ’99, let out a month before her eighteenth birthday. As Hilton tells it, “The only thing that saved my sanity was thinking about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to become when I got out of there. I was gonna do everything in my power to be so successful that my parents could never control me again… I just wanted to be independent.”

    So yes, obviously, “Free” would have some special significance to her as an anthem. Even though, if one is being honest, it was never much of an “uncertainty” that Hilton would be successful and independent. For, even if she says she didn’t use the financial resources at hand after turning eighteen, she still had the name and the according “it” girl status to “make something happen” for herself. Which she did once she was “released.” The same year that “Waiting For Tonight” would come out, specifically on September 7th, nine months after Hilton had been given the chance to reinvent herself as New York’s premier party girl. A rebirth, as it were (even though she was already a party girl before she was sent away—hell, that’s why she was sent away). Not so coincidentally, nine months is how long it takes to give birth. And in place of the “old” “caterpillar in the chrysalis” Paris was the “butterfly” one being photographed by David LaChapelle for Vanity Fair. It was that 2000 photoshoot that launched her image for the twenty-first century. A “rich bitch” flipping off the camera in her grandma’s mansion while simultaneously insisting, “People think I’m just this party girl. Well, I’m not like that.”

    In the article that accompanied it, it would become retroactively unflattering (even more so, that is) to note that, “[Conrad Hilton was] a Trumpian figure, he palled around with celebrities…and went dancing with assorted L.A. showgirls.” Fittingly, Paris had signed with Trump’s (ugh) modeling agency the same year this article came out. A modeling agency that managed to stay afloat all the way until 2017, when it was closed solely because Trump had become “president.” And yes, it’s no secret that the Hiltons were longtime family friends of the Trumps, though it’s a piece of information that Paris’ “rebrand” has helped to mitigate. Even though, as recently as 2017, she was saying shit like, “I think that [Trump’s #MeToo accusers] are just trying to get attention and get fame. I feel like, a lot of people, when something happens all these opportunists will come out. They want to get money or get paid to not say anything or get a settlement when nothing really happened. So I don’t believe any of that. And I’m sure that they were trying to be with him too. Because a lot of women, I’ve seen, like him because he’s wealthy and he’s charming and good-looking so I feel like a lot of these girls just made the story up. I didn’t really pay attention to it. I heard a couple things about it. I don’t believe it.”

    Just as she doesn’t want people to believe what they’ve seen of her own Trumpian behavior in the past (i.e., the free-wheeling racism and homophobia she would later attribute to being “traumatized”). What’s more, both the Hilton and Trump families are, as Nancy Jo Sayles put it in the aforementioned “Hip-Hop Debs” article, “forever plagued by a crisp taint of new money.” They might be “free” to do what they like, but it doesn’t mean what they do is “classy.” Luckily (in some ways) for Paris, Kim Kardashian came along to epitomize “new money” in an even worse way. Yet because Kardashian became the new “queen bee,” Hilton would end up copping some of her style too in order to remain relevant(ish). It is, indeed, Kardashian’s long hair extensions look that Paris emulates in the “I’m Free” video, using the retro gimmick of a wind machine (a.k.a. industrial fan) to make her hair billow as she basks in the glow of those green laser lights. The ones Lopez approved for her Francis Lawrence-directed masterpiece (on a side note: Lawrence would also go on to direct such Britney Spears masterpieces as “I’m A Slave 4 U” and “Circus”).

    And yes, “Waiting For Tonight” has the same house-influenced sound that Hilton is grafting for the present as a result of having no original ideas of her own. Though she has the gall to deliver the outro, “I am the blueprint/The real OG/This is my legacy.” One, evidently, that looks a lot like Lopez’s. Hence, not only is the song not written by Paris (in part because it’s a remake)—with credits going to Rina Sawayama, Naliya, John-Adam Howard, Pierre Blondo, Ultra Naté, Lem Springsteen and John Ciafone—but its visual concept is also lacking in much substance. At least in “Waiting For Tonight,” there was more to it than just green lasers, with a narrative centered around a “Millennium Party” (or, what one might have then preferred to call an “End of the World Party”) on New Year’s Eve. One that takes place in an underground jungle club that looks like somewhere Hilton might have attended in her aughts glory days. To honor that “Y2K” concept, there’s even a “gasp!” moment when the computerized counter for the new year briefly seems to glitch and cause a power outage. But, of course, it’s just a false alarm and everyone quickly gets back to partying even harder (though, sadly, no longer partying like it’s 1999).  

    In another moment, Hilton also channels Lopez in “Waiting For Tonight” (as well as some brief glimpses of certain scenes in Lopez’s video for “Play”) by bedecking her entire body in glitter. The same goes for Lopez in a similar “nude” scene (though of course, unlike Paris, she’s actually wearing a top). Except that Paris uses this moment as yet another in the pile of meaningless scenes she’s showing us for this “video,” which is conceptless (a common trend at present) apart from her languidly bopping around and engaging in some non-choreo. But, like she says, she’s “free to do what she wants to do.” As if that were ever really something that was in question apart from a brief blip that ended in 1999. The year J. Lo would rise to prominence as much as Hilton, with the former releasing her debut album, On the 6. Funnily enough, Hilton would make her DJ debut at 2012’s Pop Music Festival in São Paulo, with J. Lo headlining the concert. It seems, then, that Hilton culling her inspiration from someone almost as subpar and lacking in original ideas is not as much of a reach as calling Brat “J. Lo coded.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Zodiac Adherents Rejoice: A Gemini, A Virgo and A Scorpio Come Together for “My Oh My”

    Zodiac Adherents Rejoice: A Gemini, A Virgo and A Scorpio Come Together for “My Oh My”

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    Opening with the sort of “La-la, la-la, la-la, la-la-la-la/La-la, la-la-la” that Kylie Minogue is known for (obviously on 2001’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”), “My Oh My,” her first single of 2024 in honor of her headlining performance at BST Hyde Park, also mimics another 00s-era track: ATC’s “Around the World (La La La La La).” Which makes sense considering how Y2K-inspired “My Oh My” is with its particular kind of pulsing dance rhythm. Of course, apart from that, the song bears a sound that is unmistakably Tove Lo’s, who features on the track along with Bebe Rexha.

    Tove, who co-wrote the single with Ina Wroldsen and Steve Mac (also the producer) centers the theme of “My Oh My” on the zodiac, which is unsurprising considering her Scorpio pride. This most recently made apparent on the cover of 2022’s Dirt Femme, on which she sports a custom-made scorpion tail by Chris Habana in honor of her sign’s emblem. So if anyone knows a little something about asking, “What’s your name? What’s your sign?” (questions that appear on the song), it’s her…not to mention Notorious B.I.G. on “Big Poppa.”

    But Tove is generous enough to let Minogue sing those lines in the first rendition of the pre-chorus, cooing, “When you asked, ‘What’s your name? What’s your sign?’/I’m Kylie, it’s Gemini/‘What’s your drink?/Let me buy’/You had me when you said, ‘Hi’/Hi.” As is to be expected, both Tove and Bebe get to perform their take on that pre-chorus by subbing in their own names and signs: Scorpio and Virgo, respectively. Naturally, Tove makes her version of the verse extra Scorpio-y by saying, “Always love a dark room with somebody to talk to/But never ever met someone like you/Hey, hello, I am To-Tove Lo/I’m a, I’m a Scorpio/Yeah, the sexy jealous kind/You had me when you said, ‘Hi’/Hi.” And yes, that last part is very much a “riff” (read: an almost word-for-word repurposing) on the signature line from Jerry Maguire, delivered by Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger) when she tells Jerry (Tom Cruise), “You had me at hello.”

    For hopelessly romantic women like the ones in this trio, that statement even holds true for someone they just encountered. After all, like Lana said, “When you know you know.” And sometimes, having another (free) drink helps to really know for sure—in vino (or whatever other alcoholic preference) veritas, and all that.

    As for the seamless coalescing of these three elements in the zodiac, this Air/Water/Earth combo is undoubtedly what lends the track its dreamy, ethereal quality (if a Fire sign had been involved, it would have just been a hot mess). One that is emphasized by the single’s starry, Y2K meets psychedelia-inspired aesthetic. A look that certainly doesn’t bend to Fire’s overall vibe.

    As for the lush, “love at first sight” (also a Minogue song title) motif of the single, in certain respects, the lyrical content also reminds one of Minogue’s 2023 hit, “Padam Padam.” For, in the same way that Minogue feels a shift in the very beat of her heart (and his) upon encountering this person (i.e., “Padam, padam, I hear it and I know/Padam, padam, I know you wanna take me home/Padam, and take off all my clothes/Padam, padam, when your hеart goes ‘padam’”), so, too, does she feel a shift here, marveling, “Yesterday was just a day/I didn’t know my life was gonna change/Yesterday, light-years away/You came in here, now, nothin’ is the same.” Needless to say, Minogue’s use of the word “light-year” seems deliberate in that she has a 2000 album called Light Years. And while some have failed to see that Minogue, Tove and Rexha have long been light-years ahead of the pop curve, others have known it all along—and can therefore understand the poetic, synergistic nature of this group of women “aligning” to sing such a track. One that is all about a sense of “destiny,” how something can be “kismet.”

    So it is that, for Rexha’s part, she adds, “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.” To play up the feeling of dizzying, twitterpated lovestruckness, the chorus replicates such sentiments with Minogue’s “la-la” signature being incorporated into the lyrics, “La-la, la-la, I’m like, ‘Oh my, oh my’/La-la, la-la, you keep me up at night/La-la, la-la, I’m feelin’ fireflies/La-la, la-la-la, oh my, oh my.”

    While the song title itself might be slightly played, with both Camila Cabello and Ava Max also recently having a single called this (though, of course, Aqua has the true monopoly on it with their 1997 song of the same name from Aquarium), Minogue, Rexha and Tove’s seamless, wool-gathering harmony is what makes this one stand apart. That, and its acknowledgement of just how important zodiac signs are to romantic chemistry.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • A Song Called “Man’s World” Is, Ironically, Far More Female-Empowering Than Katy Perry’s “Woman’s World”

    A Song Called “Man’s World” Is, Ironically, Far More Female-Empowering Than Katy Perry’s “Woman’s World”

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    Back in 2020 (that ominous year), MARINA found it to be the perfect time to release “Man’s World,” the first single from what would become her fifth album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. While the latter didn’t come out until 2021, “Man’s World” set the tone for the overall theme of the record—which was that man had fucked the world over. And how that fucking was a large part of the catalyst for the pandemic. After all, were it not for men’s corporate greed, surely the destruction of so many animals’ natural habitats wouldn’t occur. And, in turn, wouldn’t lead to the unnatural commingling of animals in human environments in such a way as to create novel viruses.

    To that point, MARINA works her chorus around the idea that living in a man’s world (with its associated patriarchal values still firmly in place) is the direct cause of Mother Nature’s relentless destruction. A phrase that functions to mean both 1) humans are destroying her and 2) in response, she is destroying them. So it is that MARINA sings, “Mother Nature’s dying, nobody’s keeping score/I don’t wanna live in a man’s world anymore.” Granted, the only thing anyone is keeping score of is how much profit they’re making from the carnage they’ve wrought upon the environment. The excess packaging, the amount of fossil fuel emissions for shipping, the fast fashion throwaways transforming into non-biodegradable piles in places that should be inhabitable but soon will not be. Et cetera.

    All of this is to say that MARINA paints a far more effective and meaningful picture of what it would mean to live in a woman’s world—a matriarchy—by describing the current bleak portrait of a man’s world than Katy Perry does in her lifeless touting of how great women are and that everyone is, in fact, already living in a woman’s world. But obviously, that’s not so.

    If it were, perhaps a man like Dr. Luke wouldn’t be able to freely continue producing “hits” like Perry’s latest single despite his reputation for being an abuser. Whether or not one believes his abuse was sexual (since women are not to be believed, right?), there’s no denying, at the very least, its verbal toxicity in relation to Kesha, the inaugural artist he “took under his wing” in order to solidify a reputation for “nurturing” talent. This would also extend to Perry, whose first major hit, “I Kissed A Girl,” was produced by Dr. Luke. Along with “Hot N Cold,” the second official single from Perry’s “debut” (if you don’t count Katy Hudson), One of the Boys. An album title, incidentally, that feels as though it’s come back to bite her in the ass, considering how much it applies to the notion of continuing to work with someone who has been called out for his long-standing inappropriate behavior. And how much Perry represents a version of “the divine feminine” that is in keeping with pandering to the male gaze.

    There is no better example of that than the video for “Woman’s World,” all part of her latest attempt at a “comeback.” But whoever dealt with the “brainstorming mood boards” and marketing aspects was perhaps too chickenshit to inform Perry that things have changed quite a bit since the last time she released an album, already four years ago (like “Man’s World,” Smile came out in 2020). And, even at that time, Perry’s rhetoric wasn’t striking much of a chord with listeners, with the album barely selling fifty thousand copies in its first week. Compared to the Perry “heyday” of Teenage Dream and even Prism, that was a long way to fall. And, in 2024, it seems Perry still has the mentality of Beyoncé’s approach to feminism circa 2014. Which means, essentially, shouting a lot of hollow, generic phrases (e.g. “She’s a winner, champion/Superhuman, number one/She’s a sister, she’s a mother”—except, like, what if she’s not?) and dressing up as Rosie the Riveter (yes, something Beyoncé also did in 2014).

    Even if one could try to get behind Perry’s hackneyed form of feminism (white feminism, mind you), there is still the atrocious video to get over. One that portrays Perry in a porn fantasy-style version of Rosie the Riveter, complete with her “seductive” wielding of the drill she has in her hand. Contrast this against the ethereal, goddess-coded video for “Man’s World,” and the messaging divide between the two songs is even more marked. With the latter genuinely embracing the notion of a “woman’s world” and the former effectively upholding the status quo of a man’s world in terms of how they want to see women presented in it (that is, if they “must” be). So while MARINA frolics serenely through nature in loose-fitting fabrics with women and men of all different shapes and backgrounds, Perry reinforces the chasm between the sexes with her “us versus them” presentation, rounded out by that presentation being exactly what’s supposed to get an “average straight man” off. This also includes reiterating the trope that it can be a “woman’s world” even if still mirroring the same shit that’s been happening in a patriarchy for centuries.

    Of course, with the true change that would arrive in a “woman’s world,” misogynistic men surely wouldn’t be happy. And yes, the most basic step toward that change is admitting this still is a man’s world—something the aforementioned Beyoncé didn’t want to admit either when she released “Run the World (Girls).” MARINA does that both deftly and poetically when she phrases the need for change like this: “If you have a mother/Daughter or a friend/Maybe it is time/Time you comprehend/The world that you live in/Ain’t the same one as them/So don’t punish me/For not being a man.” In the span of this three-minute, twenty-eight-second call to action, MARINA even manages to broach the unpleasant subject of female subjugation throughout history, singing, “Clouds in the whites of our eyes, we saw it all/Burnt me at the stake, you thought I was a witch/Centuries ago, now you just call me a bitch.”

    Conversely, the “best” Perry can come up with (along with one of her chauvinistic co-writers, Dr. Luke) is the totally vacant lines, “Sexy, confident/So intelligent/She is heaven-sent/So soft, so strong.” This being about the only verse that deviates from the half-hearted chorus, “It’s a woman’s world and you’re lucky to be livin’ in it/You better celebrate/‘Cause, baby, we ain’t goin’ away/It’s a woman’s world and you’re lucky to be livin’ in it.” Perhaps Perry feels that if she keeps repeating it, it might come true.

    But perhaps the next time she considers “writing” a “feminist anthem,” she might want to consult with MARINA, who clearly knows how to do the damn thing (complete with actually having the song produced by Jennifer Decilveo—you know, a woman).

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Katy Perry Reflects A Man’s Vision of a “Woman’s World”

    Katy Perry Reflects A Man’s Vision of a “Woman’s World”

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    In 2014, Beyoncé posted an image of herself as Rosie the Riveter. The photo quickly racked up millions of “hearts” and, at the time, became the most liked offering on her Instagram account. It was the same year Beyoncé also took to the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards to perform an almost seventeen-minute medley of tracks from her then-new, then-groundbreaking self-titled album, famously “surprise dropped” on December 13, 2013. In the audience watching Beyoncé perform that night was none other than Katy Perry, dressed as Britney Spears in the famous denim dress from the 2001 American Music Awards. Her matching denim “Justin” was, of all people, Riff Raff (who was cashing in on a bit of “fame” at that moment after James Franco played a riff on him in 2012’s Spring Breakers). Yet another man in Perry’s life who hasn’t exactly been a ringing endorsement for her sense of feminism. That aside, it seems telling that the camera flashes to Perry while Beyoncé sings the portion of “Blow” that goes, “Turn the cherry out.” Words that Perry gleefully sings along with. It’s the kind of visceral, “fuck me as hard as you want” phrase that men are known for wanting to hear. And yet, like Perry with “Woman’s World,” Beyoncé was presenting it through a supposed “female empowerment” lens.

    The night of that performance also happened to be the one where Beyoncé was famously positioned in front of the word “FEMINIST” projected behind her in big, bold white letters. A word extracted from the “We Should All Be Feminists” speech delivered by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at a TEDx Talk in 2012 (later, the speech was adapted into a book-length essay and released the same year as Beyoncé’s self-titled album). That speech would become the centerpiece not just of “Flawless,” but of the entire record. This despite the fact that many of the lyrics on it reinforced traditional ideas of femininity, including being sexually desirable to a man (e.g. “Let me sit this ass on you/Show you how I feel/Let me take this off/Will you watch me?/That’s mass appeal/Don’t take your eyes, don’t take your eyes off it/Watch it, babe”).

    That Bey tapped Justin Timberlake to co-write three of the “sexiest” songs on the album, “Blow,” “Partition” and “Rocket,” is also telling of the fact that there is no pure sense of “female empowerment” here, so much as the perspective that a man lends to what that is “supposed to” mean in “safe,” color-within-the-lines patriarchal world. And yes, Timberlake would go on to become an even more overt symbol of toxic masculinity in the years since Beyoncé‘s release (while Ngozi Adichie would go on to negate some of her feminist cachet by being frequently accused of promoting TERF rhetoric). Though not quite as much as Dr. Luke, who has gone back to his original stage name after wielding another alias (Tyson Trax) for a while. This in the wake of some “bad publicity” from his long-standing Kesha vs. Dr. Luke legal battle, which only recently came to an end with a settlement on both sides, the details of which are unknown.

    At a certain point in the case, Katy Perry’s name was brought into the fray when texts that Kesha sent to Lady Gaga stated that Dr. Luke raped Perry as well. Perry was then brought in to give a testimony saying that the claim was false. She also mentioned that she felt “pressured” in general from both sides, but in particular to support Kesha because otherwise, she was “supporting rape” instead. In order to distance herself from the entire affair, Perry avoided working with Dr. Luke on her 2017 album, Witness, considered her biggest flop…until 2020’s Smile. She did the same with the latter album, but now, it seems, she feels enough time has passed to return to the collaborator who has “given” Perry her biggest hits. And yes, it’s not implausible that she’s gone crawling back to him precisely because she’s interpreted his absence on her last two records as the reason why they weren’t as successful as previous ones.

    But she must have lost her damn mind if she believed that, of all the songs to bring him in for, one called “Woman’s World” would be the most appropriate choice. As the title—one that Cher already used for the better in 2013—suggests, it’s supposed to be an anthem of feminist triumph. But, like Dr. Luke producing the majority of a record called Planet Her, any attempt at “empowering” the “divine feminine” is automatically lost with the presence of this nefarious man. One who, as Abigail Breslin rightly pointed out, represents how “working with known abusers in any industry just contributes to the narrative that men can do abhorrent shit and get away with it.” And, in case there was any doubt about how she was referring to Perry’s new song, Breslin added, “On another note, I love @KeshaRose and she gave one of the best shows I’ve ever been to last year <3 stream Kesha!” Sadly, such support from Perry, despite being—once upon a time—good friends with Kesha (who even appeared in the “I Kissed A Girl” video), has never been openly displayed.

    As if a certain writer and producer credit on the song weren’t already a strike against it, then come the banal lyrics, “It’s a woman’s world and you’re lucky to be livin’ in it/You better celebrate/‘Cause, baby, we ain’t goin’ away.” Ummm, was there ever a threat that women were supposed to “go away”? Because it’s not like they haven’t been “on the scene” at least since the Rosie the Riveter days (after all, people are only “counted” in this life if they work for pay). Which brings us back to that problematic trope Beyoncé also proudly touted back in 2014—one that Perry has seen fit to reanimate for her totally nonsensical “Woman’s World” video.

    Directed by Charlotte Rutherford, the “concept” (if one can even call it that) presents Perry as a sort of hybrid construction worker/welder (in the spirit of Jennifer Beals from Flashdance). This largely because it gives someone the opportunity to add a “WO” to the “MEN” in a “MEN AT WORK” sign. From there, Rutherford cuts to an image of Perry in Rosie’s signature muscle flexing pose while perched on a suspended beam in the center of eight other women. Like Beyoncé, however, Perry didn’t seem to get the memo that Rosie the Riveter isn’t really all that feministic. The entire reason for her existence, first of all, is because of a man’s “marketing” idea.

    Originally “created” by J. Howard Miller, the intent of the design and poster was never to “empower” women, but merely to get those who were already employed in factories during WWII to work harder and more compliantly. In short, to tell them to “giddy-up” without complaining. More sexist still about the beloved image is the fact that women were only invited to work “men’s” jobs when society was absolutely desperate because those with dicks had to be sent abroad for a brief time. And when those men came back, the women who had taken over and done just as well (if not better) at the job, were told to simply go back to the kitchen. Where they had also still been working anyway—expected to embody both gender roles in the absence of men. Something that men themselves are never asked or expected to do, even in the most crisis-heavy situations.

    So yes, it does say something that Perry has opted to dress in this guise. A guise deliberately made to look like a sexy pinup rather than a worker. One who would actually appear beleaguered and decidedly unsexy. Because, let’s be honest, it’s hard to look sexy on minimum wage. Or even medium wage, for that matter. So it is that rich women like Beyoncé and Perry cosplay at embodying the “everywoman,” the “hard worker” without understanding what that really looks like. And yet, they expect to be lauded for championing “women’s equality” by reverting to a symbol that represents anything but that.

    As for the other nonsensical elements in Perry’s video, there’s the scene of her drinking from a bottle of “Whiskey for Women”—as if, what, she couldn’t handle a bottle of so-called Whiskey for Men? Is the Whiskey for Women slightly diluted or something? Just in case she doesn’t want to get taken advantage of by Dr. Luke? In the next scene, Perry and her backup dancers are shown swinging their nonexistent dicks in front of a urinal while still clad in their sexy construction worker outfits. Only adding fuel to the flames of the Freud-backed male belief that all women have “penis envy.”

    The urinals are soon “swept away” in favor of another set (something about it also smacks of Britney’s “Joy of Pepsi” commercial), an industrial rooftop that gives Perry the chance to rip off her already scanty “worker’s” vest and showcase an even scantier jeweled (and star-shaped!) American flag bikini top. The effect? More pandering to the male gaze. This compounded by additional moments that will have viewers asking: is she for real? Including, giving a porno expression while holding a drill, drinking the “Whiskey for Women” in such a way so that it “sensually” pours all over her body and deciding to throw in an arbitrary message about self-pleasure by momentarily parading a vibrator as she makes the moanier sounds of the track.

    When an anvil drops on her head as though to indicate this portion of the video was all just a satirical joke, things don’t improve much when we see a flattened Perry in a white-knit bikini top and robot-esque “pants” (designed by Victor Clavelly). Because she then, of all things, blows herself up. Not “explosion-style,” but balloon-style. In other words, she’s positioning herself as that other male fantasy: a blow-up doll. Even though the intent, in her mind, seems to be that women can reanimate no matter how many times they’re knocked down, or literally squashed.

    In the next iteration of the completely cracked-out video, Perry wanders the streets of an apocalyptic-looking realm, making her way to more middle-of-nowhere territory. Whereupon her body “breaks down” and she stops at a gas station to “pump herself.” With gas. So again, more male fantasy imagery involving a woman being pumped and “thing-ified.” An entity designed solely for something to be inserted in. To make the video even more incohesive, Trisha Paytas shows up out of nowhere pulling a monster truck with a rope behind her so that she can give Perry a ride. That Paytas has come out to identify as a man rather than a woman also lends more “women through men’s eyes” meaning to this video.

    From there, the two take a bumpy ride while Perry applies makeup in a “sloppy” way—this being her lone (and, yes, very flaccid) attempt at showing the women don’t have to be “pretty.” Subsequently, they roll up to a random house that Perry infiltrates (with Paytas disappearing as haphazardly as she appeared). Walking through it, she breaks through a glass door (one assumes that’s her lazy metaphor for shattering the glass ceiling) that leads to the backyard of a girl doing some TikTok bullshit. The girl’s selfie stick also “happens” to be in the shape of a female gender symbol (♀), which such products already kind of are to begin with.

    As Perry joins in to dance with her, she abruptly decides to steal the stick (no comment on what would go down if the shoe were on the other foot and a Black girl stole something from a white woman) before hopping on a helicopter that conveniently materializes to take her away. When the girl shouts out to her, “Who are you?!” Perry “roars,” “I’m Katy Perry!” A name that, thanks to this song and video, is now forever synonymous with misogyny. She might as well have done a cover of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” A song that Brown took all the credit for despite it being written by Betty Jean Newsome, whose misogynistic lyrics reflect the time she grew up in. The same can’t be said for Perry and this abhorrent visual, paired with lyrics and music co-helmed by an abuser.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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