I'd have thought of Mylène Farmer as bogus sophistication, not bogus innocence, though the only videos I've seen of hers are "Libertine" and "Désenchantée." She is playing a kid in the latter, but not necessarily an innocent (I think we're expected to go "oh, poor thing!" at the start; but urchins are supposedly wised-up, not innocent, except in the sense of "not guilty"). I actually think "Désenchantée" is a great song. The videos for that and "Libertine" strike me as very good, but also unbelievably kitsch, with a sense of shameless opportunism. I really don't know if we're expected to be taken in by them or expected to play along with them, as if we're in on the game. I probably don't understand France any more than I understand Korea. I thought the point of Alizee's "Moi Lolita" was that she was underage but not innocent. Merely underage. (Which is what you're saying, right?) I guess she could be "innocent" in the sense that 'cause she's young she gets to be careless, maybe.
I remember Vanessa Paradis' attempt at an American LP coming across as just plain stupid, with possibly the worst version of "Femme Fatale" in history. However, although there's an air of knowingness and risk about Farmer's "Libertine" video that I find completely phony - knowingness that's not supported by any knowledge - at the same time I'm impressed by its gall. It has a kind of reach. I don't hate it at all, not in the way that I hate the knowing tone of the average snide rock critic, which is just small and crabbed.
I guess that "Libertine" was an actual risk, in that Farmer hadn't had any big hit up to that moment, so she and Boutonnat were rolling the dice bigtime on "Libertine," with everything in the pot.
Is there a word for bogus sophistication, not the sort of sophistication that's merely phony, but sophistication that knows and tells you it's phony?
Mary Martin's original "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" strikes me as bogus innocence and bogus sophistication, the innocence of course being a self-conscious put-on, whereas I don't know if Porter et al. were aware of how silly the "sophistication" was, though maybe he knew that it was innocuous underneath, just a gesture towards worlds of complication that his songs didn't actually deliver. Don't think that that kind of knowingly naughty "innocence" is what you mean by "burikko" anyway, but I'm not sure if you're saying that when it comes across as a donned "innocence" that we're in on, that it's burriko, but that when it crosses over into camp it's a failure. And do we need necessarily to be in on it?
IU seems plausibly girlie, whether she's playing dress-up or not; whereas Orange Caramel are dressing as if they stepped from the pages of a pre-schooler's picture book, young women in their very late teens in costume as little dolls. But not camp, as far as I can tell, though I'm not sure why I say it isn't. And I guess scores or maybe hundreds of performers are doing the same thing, though my ignorant impression is that most of them are Japanese, not Korean. It's kind of off-putting - well, not that I necessarily react against it so much as I almost have no reaction to it at all, other than "I don't quite get it." And that's not how the Orange Caramels dress when they're in After School.
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I remember Vanessa Paradis' attempt at an American LP coming across as just plain stupid, with possibly the worst version of "Femme Fatale" in history. However, although there's an air of knowingness and risk about Farmer's "Libertine" video that I find completely phony - knowingness that's not supported by any knowledge - at the same time I'm impressed by its gall. It has a kind of reach. I don't hate it at all, not in the way that I hate the knowing tone of the average snide rock critic, which is just small and crabbed.
I guess that "Libertine" was an actual risk, in that Farmer hadn't had any big hit up to that moment, so she and Boutonnat were rolling the dice bigtime on "Libertine," with everything in the pot.
Is there a word for bogus sophistication, not the sort of sophistication that's merely phony, but sophistication that knows and tells you it's phony?
Mary Martin's original "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" strikes me as bogus innocence and bogus sophistication, the innocence of course being a self-conscious put-on, whereas I don't know if Porter et al. were aware of how silly the "sophistication" was, though maybe he knew that it was innocuous underneath, just a gesture towards worlds of complication that his songs didn't actually deliver. Don't think that that kind of knowingly naughty "innocence" is what you mean by "burikko" anyway, but I'm not sure if you're saying that when it comes across as a donned "innocence" that we're in on, that it's burriko, but that when it crosses over into camp it's a failure. And do we need necessarily to be in on it?
IU seems plausibly girlie, whether she's playing dress-up or not; whereas Orange Caramel are dressing as if they stepped from the pages of a pre-schooler's picture book, young women in their very late teens in costume as little dolls. But not camp, as far as I can tell, though I'm not sure why I say it isn't. And I guess scores or maybe hundreds of performers are doing the same thing, though my ignorant impression is that most of them are Japanese, not Korean. It's kind of off-putting - well, not that I necessarily react against it so much as I almost have no reaction to it at all, other than "I don't quite get it." And that's not how the Orange Caramels dress when they're in After School.