Rules Of The Game #6: The Boney Joan Rule

[koganbot]

Latest column, in which I explain why everything is everything else.

The Boney Joan Rule

Your own examples or refutations are welcome.

(I'm not back from vacation, but I did find my way to a computer, and maybe I'll succeed in doing so again soon; sorry to Dave, Nia, Kat, and Jessica for not getting a chance to respond to your most recent comments.)

EDIT: Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I thought there was a pretty interesting response to something along these lines ("how much of the music you like is determined by yr dick" was the question) on the 2006 Teenpop Thread.

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i dont know how to ask this without being offensive, and i mean it with real and genuine respect, and while actually liking ashlee--how much of yr love of teen pop is connected to yr dick frank?
-- anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, May 9, 2006 10:59 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

The Lily Allen hype shifts into overdrive.
-- Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, May 9, 2006 6:39 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

Not a dumb question, Anthony, though not all love is genital, and I'd say that current teenpop is far from being the most sexualized music out there (compared to Europop and dance and r&b or even the teenpop of seven years ago). And also remember that I don't have a lot of access to the visuals - which isn't to say that the aurals can't be enticing. (Strangely enough, Ashlee's videos tend to fall flat for me.) But then, I definitely feel an emotional warmth towards the personas/bodies/human beings I hear in Ashlee's and Lindsay's and Kelly's sound - and from the words and the minds that those words reveal (or invent or construct or whatever). But my favorite Ashlee song is "La La," which isn't as sexy as it's trying to be, even if it's all about sexual role playing; and another favorite is "I Am Me," which hits me in the way that Courtney Love singing "Violet" and Grace Slick singing "White Rabbit" hit me, neither of which particularly convey "warm, wet, inviting pussy." In fact, the person who's singing really feels sexy to me is Lily Allen (whom I wouldn't call teenpop, though I'm glad to write about her on this thread, and she's in the teengirl's age group): the way her tone is almost deadpan but falls lazily from her lips. But I don't yet have the warm feeling towards her that I have towards Ashlee, Kelly, and Lindsay, which is certainly a feeling of love towards a feminized something. (Well, it's three distinct feelings: the Ashlee feeling towards Ashlee, the Kelly feeling towards Kelly, the Lindsay feeling towards Lindsay.) But then, I rate the Veronicas "4ever" as the song of the year so far, and though it has a very sexualized sound, it's not pulling that response from me. The feeling is more like being doused in sugar.

But then also, a lot of great music that I'd call "sexual" - Amber's "Sexual," for instance, and a lot of stuff by t.A.T.u., and "Don't Say Goodbye" by Paulina Rubio - might as well be performed by someone called Anonymous. I'm not feeling love (or much of anything one way or another) for the people who perform them. And it's great sexual music anyway. But then, it's wrong to think of musical sexiness necessarily pertaining to the relation between the hearer and the performer. Really, what we do with sexy music in our lives may be more crucial, even if it's easier to talk about the relationship to the performer.

Don't know if I'm answering your question. Over the years, most of my hero-frontman-performers have been guys: Jagger and Dylan and Iggy and David and Johnny and Eminem. This isn't to say there can't be anything sensuous in my feeling towards them, but since I'm not gay, it's not warm in the way that it is towards a feminized someone like Ashlee. But Ashlee is definitely in a Jagger and Dylan rock category for me - as opposed to being in the Cover Girls sexy dance-pop category, though those categories need not be mutually exclusive and in fact there's something in all my heroes' music that pulls in a Cover Girls sensuality at least somewhere. Or something.

So I've just written a lot of words without quite figuring out my answer to your question. I tend not to have sex fantasies about people I don't actually know in real life, which is why girlie mags don't do anything for me. But that doesn't mean sex isn't a part of my feelings towards a singer.

-- Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, May 9, 2006 7:48 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

Anyone else willing to address this issue?
-- Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, May 9, 2006 7:52 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

(Should note taht no one else was willing to address this issue!)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

haha how does that not prove my point!?! frank in being willing to go where others dursnt shockah!

of course it undermines it also a bit -- in that anthony is gay, and gay men (and women) ARE more likely to allow that this is a very proper territory to be being interested in...

this also sort of crosses over with the discussion of "shippy" on diggerdydum last week

[koganbot]

Also notice that Anthony owing to basic goodheartedness is able to ask questions that from other people (e.g., Al Shipley) are destructive and useless but from him are inspiring and worth following up.

I think that Tim Finney also answered the question somewhat, though not in the way that I did given that Tim, like Anthony, is gay, hence his Ashlee love is not at all likely to be dick specific.

In general, "sexy" is a compliment when aimed at rock music, though punk challenged the sex emphasis somewhat.

[koganbot]

Comment 2009: was unfair of me to single out Shipley; at the time in my brain I was running Shipley together with some of the ilX scum who were doing much worse (e.g., Ch4ki and Enr!qu3 and g3rshy, obviously, and d33j, unfortunately, and - I hate to say it - Jess).

[koganbot]

Comment 2010: Further, the way I wrote that thing implied that Shipley had come in with a line of attack that went "You like it owing to your dick," when he wasn't one of the ones doing so.

[koganbot]

Nor was d33j, unless I'm misremembering.