In this series, I did not want to force the narrative of “victim” on any of these artists. Kelly shows despite allegations of sexual abuse, when Tupac is celebrated in death despite his rape convictions, when sexual misconduct rumors against David Bowie are chalked up to “It was the ‘70s!”, when Leonard Cohen’s and Bob Dylan’s womanizing ways fail to obstruct their fame, success, or reputation. Or when LiveNation continues to promote R. Or when Yoko Ono, Courtney Love, Jennifer Chiba, and Ariana Grande are held accountable for the actions of their male counterparts in narratives so pervasive that they are still contested decades later. Or when black female artists are second billing at a music festival while their white male contemporaries are headliners. Or when female musicians we know and respect who get groped at the bar after the show by their male publicist when they should be reveling in the high of a performance. “Crowd Pleaser” can frame the way we view women who perform and appear in magazines, or in press photos that try to seduce you as a means to sell records for male executives while the band members themselves only get a fraction of those royalties, which they’ll use for gas fare to the next city on tour, where “fans” will try to finger them onstage, and later tell their girlfriends how the lead singer was good but not fuckable, that they are at best mediocre guitar players or drummers, and will use them as masturbatory fodder while writing their piny, nonconsensual blue-balls-inspired love ballads. In this series, you will hear from women who have had vastly different experiences in their path to musicianship and who hold different ideas of what it means to be a “Girl in a Band,” a “woman in music.” In the photos they are seen in roles created by men, for men, yet with their own styles represented, on their own terms. “Play a crowd pleaser” - Drunk person at a musical event Quickly release the cash, watch it fall slowly” - Rae Sremmurd In the same vein, “crowd pleaser” symbolizes the way an audience interacts with women and nonbinary musicians on and off stage. It’s widely accepted as a critique of the way we view women in media, and it’s shaped the way we consume content, yet it’s often disregarded as just another feminist killjoy touchstone. But that phrase, used in countless Op-Eds on pseudo-feminist pop culture sites clandestinely backed by corporate behemoths, has been watered down as it appears in our current vernacular. The working title of this series was Gaze, as in, the male gaze, which was coined by British film critic Laura Mulvey in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in 1975. The girl anchors the stage, sucks in the male gaze, and, depending on who she is, throws her own gaze back out into the audience.” - Kim Gordon, from her memoir, Girl in a Band “The music matters, but a lot comes down to how the girl looks.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |