Keane got Timmy T.’d. Or Christopher Cross-ed, if you’d rather. It’s a weird Buggles tune of musical lookism. In the music industry, it’s all fun and chords until you have to make a video. Keane is the singer, and he’s in the video — sort of. Let’s say you get clearer shots of the Video Girl’s Chucks, than you do the actual artist.
I probably would never have seen the video if it weren’t for Italian MTV — they still do the “M” part here. And the only thing in this video that stands out, other than the Drew Barrymore in Mad Love plot, are the great lengths the go to hide the singer.
Judging from the concert-style sequences, they shot the band performing the whole song. But every time the camera gets near Keane’s face, it’s a quick pan, or a head turn, or cloaked in shadows.
Why? Why is this all shot like he’s in the Witness Protection Program? Is it because his jawline isn’t square enough? Or are his cheeks are too full and his face to soft to belong to a “rock star?”
I wonder if he was sad when they showed him the finished video — especially since the “plot” carried by the actors isn’t all that compelling. I wonder if it was the same feeling Carnie Wilson had when they stuck her in a blazer and full-length skirt on the BEACH.
Or the same way Nancy Wilson felt about how they “marketed” her image.
How do we enjoy music, anyway? Last I heard, it was just that — your ears. But consider this: in 1980 Christopher Cross was the first solo artist to sweep all four general field Grammy Awards. In 1981, MTV launched. Not necessarily causation, but they correlate enough to get each others’ mail.
It seems like if you’re going to talk about the intersection of feminine identity and service, a more complex working definition of “girlie” might be needed than is provided here. Not to mention, if you’re juxtaposing two cultural concepts of womanhood, describing the maintenance of one as “slumber parties and pink iPod cases” and the other from a lens of oppression where women are allowed to “make food and babies only,” your critical gender terms might need to be more expansive.
Especially when you’re considering images of these two divergent expressions of femininity, muted against the backdrop of the traditionally masculine construct of war. It’s a compelling project, but there’s a lot about the communication of the ideas behind this photojournalism that could be expressed more completely.
I don’t wonder if it’s because the journalist doesn’t make a distinction between the soldier, and the woman off-duty — that femininity isn’t an identity that need be expressed and maintained when filling the role of the former. Perhaps part of that seeming inaccuracy is that she seems to understand why an Afghan woman would sign up for the military, much more than a Western woman.
They either have family in the army, or they like the idea of running around and being outside. The pay isn’t bad, either. And you know in the case of the British, the army recruitment campaign is pretty good. It basically says, “If you like to travel, join the army and you’ll see the world.”
Nowhere in there is the concept of service. Of giving selflessly. And gender, is a part of that self.
I don’t know about you ladies, but to me the army has never seemed like the ideal place to spend your early twenties. In my mind, there would be no shopping, Gossip Girl or spending hours in one position under the sun trying to achieve the perfect tan. Or basically anything else that’s silly and unimportant, but is an important part of me feeling unashamedly like a girl.
Turns out I was wrong. Lalage Snow is a photographer who has spent a good part of the last five years in Iraq and Afghanistan photographing female soldiers. According to her work, girls in the army remain very intent on “being girls.”
VICE: Hey Lalage. What’s up? Lalage Snow: Hey! Just got back from holiday with some friends. We stayed in a house in Assenois, which is in the south of Belgium. We ate lots of paté and drunk biére blonde.
And how did that differ from your time in Iraq and Afghanistan? Haha! It was different, but you know, it was much girlier than you’d think. The British girls in Iraq, for example, would sunbathe any chance they got, while when it came to the way they decorated their bunks everything was over-the-top girly. Pink washbags and sponges, pink iPod cases. The American girls would have a slumber party almost every night. They’d watch scary films and eat popcorn in their little bunker on a computer. When you are in such a masculine environment you sort of need to cling on to your femininity really tightly.
Holy Gravy. This has to be shopped. Tell me there is not curriculum that includes Nicholas Sparks, nor people who are unable to read the whole volume, thus necessitating Cliffs Notes. For a Nicholas Sparks book.
In any event, I hope it includes a discussion section on how he infantilizes, sanctifies, and whoreifies his female characters. Let’s not forget Savannah who got date raped but wasn’t sure she didn’t love her attacker. He probably doesn’t hate women — though more nuanced and complete feminine portraits might come out of a room of four year olds and some Bratz Dolls.
I always figured the heavy religious influence certainly contributed, that Bible book doesn’t do chick lit so good, either — but this is interesting. From his FAQs (which amusingly include the “frequently” asked question, “What were your running times in high school?” Uh huh.)
Why do you write love stories? I chose that genre because there was little to no competition.
The parallel that seems obvious between Sparks and Kincade becomes even stronger knowing this. Wildly successful art-as-product. Because sometimes there’s art because you have to get out or it will consume you, and sometimes there’s art for consumption.
It’s nice to know that dignity is now a commodity to be traded like Oranges and Oats in Pit.
It’s also nice to know there are women out there unabashedly relying on tears, skin, lies, and saccharine charm to persuade. It means that all that time spent cultivating a critical thought process capable of reasoning through intellect, and all that effort spent conducting yourself as an individual whose capabilities are judged on your work, not gender, isn’t enough. Because knowing there are women behaving like this keeps you hungry to make sure your example grows in numbers, and determined to make this nothing any woman would want to admit.
If part of your dignity is worth $850, perhaps the money you saved simpering short-skirt drinks out of men at the bar, will help you collect the whole set.
(And I will gladly spend the $12 I earned on an Appletini. Though I would probably order a real drink instead.)
Where was I? Oh, yes. I cannot support Chris Brown’s music because I cannot support his behavior. Much like I can’t support factory farming by eating meat.
And much like the idea of both make me utterly disgusted.
Right. Though I can’t abide by how he’s conducted his personal life, a bunch of artists are in that boat — and I supposed it can’t preclude him from making his art if he insists.
Rhianna aside, throwing a chair through a window is quite enough argument that perhaps this is not an adult who is equipped with the maturity to harness his emotions, and perhaps not who we want in the position to influence children.
Which of course he does anyway. The “Chris Brown can beat me any day” tweets stirred up by the Grammys? Clearly the two weeks of domestic violence training as part of his plea deal did not permeate to his fans.
Maybe in sentencing, instead of probation, the real way abuse can be repaid to society is a revocation of celebrity. For the famed, that seems to be the only real punishment. No more soap box, no more pedestal.
Because you’re no one anyone should look up to anyway.
Last night I was half-watching Alcatraz — for LOST and San Francisco nostalgia, mostly — and you have to look no further than the casting for evidence that the gross Jonah Hill dichotomy is still in effect. That is to say, if the genders were reversed, the casting would not look the same.
I adore Jorge Garcia, super hard. His blog, his openness with fans (appearing on fan podcasts, the whole bit) he’s excellent (I mean, look at the tag.) But there is no way this scene would happen with the genders reversed.
“It is somewhat trying to pass a season of enjoyment in the company of persons who are constantly on the outlook for matters of complaint.”
“I don’t want lessons, I want practice…a bad or indifferent teacher is worse than none.”
“I say fearlessly that the Michaelangelo is hideous and badly drawn. I wouldn’t give a tuppence for it, except as a curiosity.”
The Tale of Beatrix Potter*, Margaret Lane.
Beatrix Potter was awesome. I forgot they made a Reneé Zellweger movie about her, so other than having a few of her beautiful books as a kid, this biography is all I know — and what I know now is pretty stupendous.
The Potter model of success seems downright modern. She honed her craft, started her stories as blog-like letters to kids, worked for herself, and self-published her first book. The engraving and printing of Peter Rabbit cost her 11 pounds. She invested in her passion, and then others followed.
“They were both approaching 40. Their friendship had grown steadily through four quiet but eventful years, and in temperament they seem to have been ideally suited.” Ugh. Finally engaged, and I say finally because she wasn’t allowed to be a person without a husband (at least at home) and he dies before she gets to marry him. (Not a spoiler. You can’t spoil history.)
If you need a “tie it to the moment” reason to check it out, it’s currently a popular time period — Beatrix could have dropped in on Downton Abbeyif she was allowed to go anywhere. Because of course, if you’re not married, you don’t get to go anywhere — not even to live at the farm you bought with your own money.
She eventually marries another, that one farm turns into several, and then into the whole countryside which she bought and left to the National Trust. Her story has it all: Gender-barrier breaking success under the thumb of the same oppression; an artist story of commercial acclaim only in unhappiness; and supreme doing-it-for-yourself (especially during the war, she did more on her farms than men) all with an eye to altruism. Dang.
There’s a lot of story in those tiny books.
(*Book #2. Book #1: Born Round, Frank Bruni, Book #3 is ready to go on my Nook, Book #4 simultaneously ready on my phone. Prepared for idle times in the parlour, people.)
“I accidentally sent it to Drake, the rapper…not my doctor. So Drake got an email from Jonah Hill at 11:30 at night with the subject ‘What I Ate Today,’ with a list of foods and various times.”
Though you may join us on occasion for tea and cookies. We meet on Tuesdays. Bring Drake.
*CV: Chairwoman of the Society to Make Jonah Hills’ Chromosomes Match; The former foremost scholar of the Jonah Hill Starship Gender Phenomenon; and President of the Ladies Auxilliary Where’s My Female Jonah Hill Guild.
“If a person’s image is drastically altered, there should be a reminder that what you’re seeing is about as true as what you saw in ‘Avatar.’”
Software that tells you how faux that photo is. Though it might be even more useful if the program made everyone ‘shopped in magazines, actually blue.
Their work is intended as a technological step to address concerns about the prevalence of highly idealized and digitally edited images in advertising and fashion magazines. Such images, research suggests, contribute to eating disorders and anxiety about body types, especially among young women.
