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Erika, where are you?
Oh, the Jukebox is going on again about Lily in a way that once again makes me very grumpy. I mean jeez, the song isn't about the only possible choices that any young woman may have but about the choices some women feel they have, with popstar Lily the songwriter who will never be in her protagonist's exact situation nevertheless having equivalent feelings burnt into her, not the protagonist's potential shutdown but her own. (How many women pop singers are skipping merrily into their thirties with their careers intact?)
I thought Lily's phrase "in this day and age" was a deliberate distancing device, an obvious archaism that lets us know that the diction isn't a hundred percent Lily's. Maybe I'm not right about that, but obv obv obv Lily knows that the protagonist doesn't represent all women.
I do like Xhuxk's and Lex's takes even though they're contrary to one another and somewhat contrary to what I just said, but some of the other guys just don't want to give Lily a break. They're looking to feel superior. I wonder that they don't wonder why they want to beat Lily down so much. (Of course, I write plenty of reviews where I'm coming off as superior, but I'm usually right.)
I generally do like the Jukebox crew, though 'cause of old ilX shit it doesn't feel like a safe place to me, which isn't its fault and probably those few Jukeboxers who were anywhere near the ilX creepy stuff have outgrown it (and were only a wee bit involved in the first place) so these fears are just holdovers, but there are also just too many other things in my queue today... but if Erika had shown up for the convo you can bet I'd been in it, and I don't know why she didn't. She was excellent on this song here. Erika, where are you? If I'd known you weren't going to show I'd have cribbed your ideas.
I remember Martin Kavka saying about Brooks & Dunn's "Cowgirls Don't Cry": "Dolly Parton wouldn't stand for this, would she?" And my thought was, yeah, but the song isn't about Dolly Parton, and why can't this other woman also be a subject for a song? (I do think I got Martin to come around a bit on that song.)
[To anticipate Will's request: yeah I might add the Lily part of this post - but not the stuff about the Jukeboxers - to the Jukebox comment thread, but I really want to set my mind elsewhere today. Wish I were more involved in the day-to-day Jukebox convo but it's been coming too fast for me over the last couple of months.]
I thought Lily's phrase "in this day and age" was a deliberate distancing device, an obvious archaism that lets us know that the diction isn't a hundred percent Lily's. Maybe I'm not right about that, but obv obv obv Lily knows that the protagonist doesn't represent all women.
I do like Xhuxk's and Lex's takes even though they're contrary to one another and somewhat contrary to what I just said, but some of the other guys just don't want to give Lily a break. They're looking to feel superior. I wonder that they don't wonder why they want to beat Lily down so much. (Of course, I write plenty of reviews where I'm coming off as superior, but I'm usually right.)
I generally do like the Jukebox crew, though 'cause of old ilX shit it doesn't feel like a safe place to me, which isn't its fault and probably those few Jukeboxers who were anywhere near the ilX creepy stuff have outgrown it (and were only a wee bit involved in the first place) so these fears are just holdovers, but there are also just too many other things in my queue today... but if Erika had shown up for the convo you can bet I'd been in it, and I don't know why she didn't. She was excellent on this song here. Erika, where are you? If I'd known you weren't going to show I'd have cribbed your ideas.
I remember Martin Kavka saying about Brooks & Dunn's "Cowgirls Don't Cry": "Dolly Parton wouldn't stand for this, would she?" And my thought was, yeah, but the song isn't about Dolly Parton, and why can't this other woman also be a subject for a song? (I do think I got Martin to come around a bit on that song.)
[To anticipate Will's request: yeah I might add the Lily part of this post - but not the stuff about the Jukeboxers - to the Jukebox comment thread, but I really want to set my mind elsewhere today. Wish I were more involved in the day-to-day Jukebox convo but it's been coming too fast for me over the last couple of months.]
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I never even considered that Lily is honestly trying to express judgment on a "class"; unlike "Fuck You," this and other songs are expressly and, I thought, self-evidently personal. The extent to which they relate to other people depends on that person's own experiences. For my part I understand the angst she's conveying in this song pretty well, as much as I can given my own societal pressures and/or comparative lack thereof. I basically sang this song to myself for a year while I was temping. "What if this is actually my life?" How come when David Byrne does it it's brilliant???
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(I really hate how these Lily conversations turn me into a broken record entitled Oversimplified Gender Politics, because sometimes a lack of a cigar is just a lack of a cigar -- but it really does seem like everybody's unhappiness with her is gender-based.)
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It's kind of amazing really -- I'm usually not down with those sorts of arguments either, but holy jeez it's so clearly gender-based! The convo I had with a friend was really interesting, actually; she was at my place with her boyfriend and I explained how I came around to "Not Fair" and how it brought out some of my own prejudices and shitheadedness even in defending the song. Apparently my friend and her boyfriend had had the exact same conversation, leading him to the exact same understanding that I had.
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I don't think it's even the prejudices and shitheadedness that bother me so much -- there's nothing wrong with a little kneejerk defensiveness when you think your gender is being badly represent -- but the sheer fucking mental laziness on the part of people who say things like "she's too demanding" and "she should just be glad he calls her back." I mean, think about the song for two fucking seconds. But they're not willing to think about it, because Lily isn't being what a girl should be, and if a girl isn't being what a girl should be, then they don't have to listen to her. And that is what Lily's unahppy about in the first place! And yet they still can't see it! Ugh!
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Anyway, I think they're being pretty generous over there, at least compared to the utter fucking fiasco that was "Not Fair." (Perhaps a career and a Prince Charming are acceptable things for women to want, whereas if you want a man to, you know, treat you like an actual person with actual desires instead of just a particularly comfortable hole in which to put his penis, you should just shut your face and be grateful he doesn't beat you, you whiny stupid bitch.)
I am a bit puzzled by the comments that nobody at 22 or 30 (the protagonist isn't even 30 yet, though!) really believes that 30 is the end of the road, or that there's no difference between "an alright job" and "a career" -- of course nobody believes that they're going to cease to exist after a certain age, but it is easy to believe, at 26, that you've missed your shot at whatever it is you could have been. Because -- and that's the point -- at 22 you could have been anything, but at 26 you now are something. And something is a lot more limited than anything. It's right there in the song: when she was 22, the future looked bright.
And of course it isn't like you don't actually have time to change at 26, or 36, or 46, or like an alright job might one day lead to a career -- but it can feel that way, because while every year the Next Big Thing in writing (or acting, or politics, or music) is 22 (or 20, or 18, or fucking nine) every year you get farther and farther from that age. Like, when you started reading Gawker, you were 20 years old, and the authors and the whiz kids that everybody was buzzing about were a few years older than you, you looked at them and you thought, psh, you could write a novel as good as that in the next few years. You'd have them beat. And at 22 you were still reading Gawker, and the ones everyone was buzzing about where the same age as you, and suddenly, mixed in with the confidence that you could write a novel as good as that was this bitterness about how you hadn't, because you know what, some people have to work for a living, and their dads can't get them an internship at a publishing company, and whatever, these kids aren't actually that amazing for being so talented so young, they're just fucking lucky. And as time passes, 22 starts to look like the border of your ability to accomplish something, and be special for it, and you know you've crossed that border and are walking farther and farther away every day, and if you don't have an amazing career by now then what is there left to do? What is there left to look forward to? Maybe you can still fall in love. Maybe you can still get married. Maybe you need to go out and meet as many people as you can. (Okay, I've never been particularly relationship-oriented, and I've never actually thought that last bit -- but I have friends for whom that is the goal, and I can understand why it would be.)
Anyway, I guess I'll go dump my comments about the video on that thread, and see if anyone has anything to say about that.
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(i have decided to stop replying just in case i end up all-capsing "motherfvcker that is not even what false consciousness means ps biography is the lamest form of criticism". and go to poptimism.)
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And ooh, nice. Will have to see if I can dig up any thoughts on "Not Fair" now...
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