Rambling About Books

I should probably have looked into Carl Rollyson’s other books before buying American Isis, but I was so excited when I searched “Sylvia Plath” on Amazon a few weeks ago and saw not one but three new books being released in early 2013, I just had to have them all, lack of reviews be damned. So, I got busy pre-ordering; after all, I can always cancel later if I change my mind, and I’m not charged until the book ships.

This is rather flimsy logic. I know this. It is what happens when one has obsessions and just a teensy bit of money to indulge them. I started reading AI as soon as it arrived and finished by the next night. I think even if I hadn’t been eager to start reading other new books I still would have finished this within a day, mostly because it was a light read that offered no new insights, at least no substantive insights. There were superficial claims and speculations a plenty, however. My favorite was Rollyson’s habit of randomly comparing Plath to Marilyn Monroe (whom he also wrote a biography about…so I guess he wants everyone to know that). It isn’t that such a comparison can’t be made, in fact that’s part of what drew me to this book, but rather that Rollyson never really makes it. He just states a fact about Plath, such as something she said or a dream she had, and then pulls in a random fact about Monroe that kind of, sort of, maybe if you turn your head and squint proves there’s a similarity between them.

I have to admit, I’d really like to read a book comparing Plath and Monroe. I think there’s a lot of potential there, and I’m not saying that just because I love them both. I think the way they’re remembered offers a great point of comparison. To nonfans, Monroe is a sex symbol who may or may not have been murdered by the Kennedys. Or did she kill herself? Oh, she also made some movies. And wasn’t she the first Playboy centerfold?  To a nonfan Plath is that crazy woman who wrote a book about being crazy. It’s really depressing, too. And there were some poems about Nazis and daddy issues. Didn’t she kill herself?
It may just be me, but the tendency to focus on their mental illness(es) and deaths rather than their work, something which both dedicated so much of themselves to and put so much effort into improving, even when, in Monroe’s case especially the effort was mocked (like she had talent anyway—pretty, that’s what she was!) along with the fact that both were, as much as they may have fought against it at times, a product of postwar America makes an interesting jumping off point. I may be over-thinking things a bit, but I'd certainly rather read a book like that than another dissecting why their deaths were Inevitable.

I read Mad Girl's Love Song as well, but I don't really want to bother with it right now. It didn't make the same impression on me as AI, positively or negatively. It had good moments and overreaching moments, but at least it stayed interesting and offered new ideas.

Petal Pusher was a book I didn't expect to like but ended up loving. I bought it on a whim two years ago but didn't get around to reading it until a few weeks ago. I bought it because the dust jacket said it was the memoir of the leader of Zuzu's Petals, an alternative all-woman pop band from the early 1990s. If you haven't heard of them, you're not alone. They remind me a bit of Belly but sweeter and less quirky. They're first album, When No-One's Looking, was a pretty big hit for an indie record with almost no promotion and that sounded absolutely nothing like the sound of the times.

Laurie Lindeen knows how to tell a story, and that's what makes this book so fantastic. I wish every woman from Jennifer Finch to Poly Styrene would write a book about her life and experiences in music, and I'd be happy if they only turned out half as good as this one. Petal Pusher follows Lindeen and her friends as they navigate their post-college years, go from boring job to boring job, and painstakingly turn their love of music into a love of making their own music. It also delves into Lindeen's personal issues, such as her parents divorce and being diagnosed with MS in her early twenties. I particularly like the way she describes learning how to play guitar. She doesn't become great at it overnight or even after a few years; just being able to stand up and play three chords in a row is an accomplishment to her.

I tried learning to play the guitar about 8 years ago, but it didn't go very far. I can play the intro to Smells Like Teen Spirit. I can play Zero. That's pretty much it. I gave up trying after a few weeks. I was really uncomfortable in the all-male environment I had to enter in order to get lessons. It was a lot like what happens to Joan Jett in The Runaways, only more subtle. I wasn't a very assertive person at that point.

I'm digressing.

Basically, I like that Lindeen doesn't try to pretend her band become successful overnight. I like that she doesn't pretend they didn't encounter misogyny. I really like that she explores rock's ultimate sin for a woman: being associated with a successful male while trying to have a career of your own. In her case it's the repercussions of being Paul Westerberg's girlfriend (and eventual wife) while trying to front a band that's fianlly starting to be successful. I enjoy books by and about male musicians; the two-thirds of a shelf taken up by books on Nirvana alone can attest to that, but they don't interest me nearly as much as books by and about female musicians. In part this is because men's stories are everywhere and are supposed to provide the template for...everything. If I want a man's point of view, I don't have to try very hard to find it. The problem is, I don't have a man's point of view, and therefore it doesn't always satisfy. Also, the dearth of books about women in music--in any genre--reinforces the idea that women have made no significant contributions to music. I realize I'm rambling a bit, but I find it a little fucked up that until age 14 I thought women in music was something that had just begun in the late 1990s. Maybe I was just stupid, but I think my ignorance had more to do with the lack of material on them than it did a lack of curiosity on my part. To be fair, a few books have been published since then, but with few exceptions, they're forgettable, half-researched and poorly written. I don't want to read about how revolutionary Hole were and have it be left at that. I want a substantive analysis of just why they were revolutionary and how Courtney screaming about rape and violence and death made people very uncomfortable while it was screaming out the angst of a generation when Kurt did it.

I was going to talk a little more about the books I've been reading, but now I think I'll save that for another day and go dream about writing academic papers on Pretty on the Inside.

Singing Outlaws

I thought it best to kick off my random, long-anticipated return to blogging by discussing something I love: the Bonnie and Clyde musical.

 A failure on Broadway but not in my heart.

There is a lot wrong with this show, and despite my love for it, I’m not surprised it was a failure. First of all, the songs border on the goofy sometimes. This doesn’t bother me very much; I like camp. In fact, I love camp. I love things that are so bad they’re great—ahem Madman—but this show isn’t in that territory. It never quite goes far enough into the goofiness and camp to qualify for So Bad It’s Awesome status. It’s a bit of a mix, really. Songs like “This World Will Remember Me” and “Made in America” are fantastic. Not only do they move the story forward while keeping it firmly in context, but they're incredibly catchy (and fun). That is where the show succeeds the most: when it takes characters and events so ingrained in popular mythology and so flattened by inaccurate and sensationalized depictions and makes them dynamic and relateable. The opening song, “Picture Show” does a great job of this by showing us a young Bonnie and Clyde, separately, dreaming about the wealth and glory they will someday have. 

Unfortunately, for Bonnie’s character most of all, the lyrics to this song are rather strictly adhered to as the show progresses. While Clyde spends the show chasing the glory of an outlaw folk hero like Billy the Kid or a crime boss like Al Capone (sometimes it seems like the songwriters only knew of those two so often are their names repeated) Bonnie, well, she wants pretty things. She wants diamonds. She wants nice clothes. She wants to be a movie star. Now, there’s nothing wrong with these dreams. I want diamonds. I want nice—by my odd standards—clothes. However, there is a problem with the way the show repeatedly insists that’s all she wants. The dreams Bonnie and Clyde have conform pretty much to the standards of What Girls Want and What Boys Want. The young Clyde does mention clothes in “Picture Show” in the lines “I will wear Sunday clothes on a Tuesday/Someday”, but it’s the only time his character ever mentions anything like that. The Boy wants power, cash, and to join the ranks of outlaw folk heroes; basically, his dreams are active. The Girl wants to be pretty and adored, to ascend to It Girl status; basically, her dreams are passive. In some ways her desire to be a movie star is comparable to his desire to be an outlaw: both crave fame, for instance, but the fact is they each have a gender conforming plan for achieving it. This probably wouldn't bother me so much if Bonnie's character was ever allowed to express a desire for anything other than the spotlight or Clyde. While both are clearly the products of poverty and desperation, only she ends up seeming superficial--and as the story unfolds, kind of stupid. 

I'm not going to bother with a history lesson--my books are all the way across the room, after all--but I will say the show is about as historically accurate as the 1967 movie starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it, not because it's a well-made biopic, but because it's fucking hilarious without ever intending to be. The end is pretty intense, though. That's one thing the filmmakers did right even if they staged it differently. 

All that digression was to say the Bonnie of the musical and the Bonnie of history are not the same person. I don't necessarily expect them to be. After all, it's impossible to know what really went on when the two of them were just driving around on back roads and camping out in their car. Blanche Barrow's memoir gives a nice account of the time she and Clyde's brother Buck spent with them (a little over 3 months), but it's still far from the full story. Neither of them kept diaries or wrote letters during their time together (except for Clyde's letter to John Ford praising the Ford V-8 as a getaway car), and Bonnie's poems are the only writings from that time. So, yeah, I get that in order to flesh either of them out enough to write a film, novel, musical, etc a certain license has to be given to the writer. The problem is the Bonnie of the musical is a caricature of an unwilling gun moll, something the real Bonnie, by all accounts never was. Show Bonnie opposes the life of crime Clyde dreams of  up to and even after she helps him escape from prison. Despite her boyfriend's status as a fugitive, for of course he will come along, she still believes her dreams of Hollywood stardom can come true, only waking up to the reality of her situation after Clyde shoots a man during a robbery. 

Of course, she stays with him, abandoning her resolve to go home now that she understands just how serious armed robbery can get (And why didn't she get that before, one wonders) after Clyde convinces her not to. That's pretty much what happens. 

B:I'm leaving!

C: Please don't.

B: Okay.

I'm just going to say, that's not how it really happened. He wasn't the first criminal she got involved with; in fact, her husband Roy Thornton, whom she was still legally married to when she died, was a violent thug who engaged in petty crime. Her writings are littered with references to prostitution, drugs, and violence. Yeah, that's right. Bonnie wrote poems. I just think that needs to be said again. Sure, she wasn't a great poet, but the point is, she tried. She was an intelligent, literate girl from a West Dallas slum who desperately wanted something, anything else for her life. I'm not saying she would have turned down movie stardom; I'm just saying not only was she not obsessed with it, but she also didn't have a problem being a fugitive Juliet. So, when the musical insists on her opposition to crime and violence, from the start pretty much, until finally she gives in and accepts those are the terms for being with him, it's problematic. It makes an unsatisfying character for one thing, and for another, it smacks of Women are Civilizing cliches. It's up to her to make him a better person, and through her love, somehow, she will. 

Except she doesn't, and by all accounts, didn't want to. Also, that doesn't fucking happen in real life. Maybe there were moments of, "What the fuck have I gotten myself into?" or maybe there weren't. The same goes for him, except the musical only extends the doubt to her. Yeah, this is a lot of babbling about something that seems minor, but I don't think it is. I think the show reduces her to a cliche in a way it doesn't him, or any of the other characters, really. It's fitting his major songs are things like "Raise a Little Hell" and "This World Will Remember Me" while hers are "You Love Who You Love" (this one she sings with Blanche, but if I go into the implications of Blanche's lines we'll be here forever) and "Dyin Ain't So Bad", in which she explains dying is fine as long as the one you love goes with you. Sure, they sing a reprise together at the end, but I'd like to see him sing a song like that by himself. I'm not counting "Bonnie"; it isn't the same as either of hers. It's just a My Girlfiriend is Awesome song. There is never a sense that he's giving anything up to be with her; it's just the opposite. I'd like a song about how being on the run with someone who can barely walk, let alone shoot a gun (she actually couldn't) severely compromises his chances of remaining free (and alive) but it's worth it to have her with him. 

 If you don't know what I'm referring to, that may be because it isn't in the show or the movie. Long story short, Clyde didn't care for traffic rules or slowing down even when they weren't being pursued, and that led to a crash which left Bonnie pretty much unable to walk after she finished healing. She was trapped in the car when the gas tank began leaking, and by the time they got her out one of her legs was burned to the bone in some places. The people who saw them during the last months of their lives said she couldn't actually stand up on her own; he had to hold her up. Not to mention, after the accident, he went to get her sister to help take care of her and planned their hiding out and robbing around trying to keep her alive.

Now, to me, that's romantic. It may just be basic human decency, but it would have been so easy to just leave her to die or get captured. It's stories like that the musical (and the film) ignore, preferring instead to make their relationship a cliche. 

Okay, here's something it does well. I mentioned this way at the beginning. It perfectly captures the sense of desperation, of "I will not fucking live like this. I don't care if I die at 23." that makes them so appealing even today.  If you strip away the mythology surrounding their crime spree you don't get much that's impressive. In terms of crimes, they weren't comparable to John Dillinger or Pretty Boy Floyd or any of their other contemporaries. It was only after photos of them were published after a shootout in Joplin, Missouri that they started receiving attention nationally. Before the photos of Bonnie holding a gun and a cigar (phallic symbol for the public mind, anyone?) or Clyde grinning while she holds a gun on him, no-one outside of Texas knew or cared who they were.

The picture I really wanted I can't find. I guess it's just in books.I talked about this one, so there it is.

The facts of their crimes aren't what made or make them appealing. There's the sexiness, the Romeo and Juliet feel of it all, but there's also a very relateable sense of suffocating desperation.

 I do enjoy posting the songs. I admit it.

 It's this or nothing. It's be crushed by poverty trying to live honestly or take something while you can. It's any life but the one we have, and outlaw isn't a bad choice, really, if you think about it. It worked out for Jesse James and Billy the Kid; it's working for all those other guys right now. Why not? The musical nails that, at least for Clyde. That's probably why I like his songs the best.You know he's always been poor and hated every second of it. The thought of dying in obscurity terrifies him more than anything else because he has an innate sense of himself as someone who should not be forgotten. Needless to say, I identify with his character in a way I cannot identify with Bonnie's. I'm not sure anyone really can identify with her, half-drawn cliche that she finally ends up being, and that's a damn shame. There's a lot of potential when writing her.

How Bout a Dance is a great song, though.

And okay, I do like You Love Who Love, despite the cliches.

What I've Been Reading Part 1

I've been having a difficult time deciding what to write about, and once I finally hit upon the right topic I found myself staring at a screen filled with a shamefully bad Reviewer Prose. If you haven't heard of that, I'll just say it's what tends to happen when a writer tries too hard to sound detached and professional in their critique of something, and in my experience it generally happens to people who don't know how to write a balance review while still retaining their unique voice or who are incredibly pretentious.

It was easy to fall into that trap while trying to write about Madeleine George's The Difference Between You and Me, primarily because this book was absolutely fucking awful from the first line to the last. Laurie Halse Anderson called it "achingly honest and empowering", and since she wrote Speak, a book which had a rather profound effect on me a few years ago, which not even Kristen Stewart and the Lifetime channel can take away, I decided that between the Anderson seal of approval and a review praising its wit and sexiness (possibly the Holy Grail of lesbian YA fiction) I would put in an InterLibrary Loan request for it. What could it hurt?

Actually, making it all the way through this book was excruciatingly painful, though I managed to do so in under two hours. I suppose that means it wasn't so bad, but then again there was once a time when I could read 600 pages in one evening, so getting through a poorly written YA novel with short pages and medium-sized text in a few hours isn't impressive. I think it would have been better if my expectations for this book had been lower, and really after reading as much lesbian YA fiction (not to mention lesbian fiction in general) as I have, I should have known better than to trust the Anderson endorsement.

There are a few things that just about every lesbian novel, YA or otherwise, has, and I could do an entire post just about that, so I'm only going to briefly discuss them. One thing that generally happens is it's made clear quite quickly whether or not the book is a Lesbian Novel or just a Novel. When it's a Lesbian Novel it usually focuses on coming out and Lesbian Issues and how to accept your Lesbian Identity. If it's just a Novel, then it's usually not a coming out story and the Lesbian Issues are either kept to a minimum or are presented as just Issues We Can All Relate To--because, you know, the author wants to sell books to the heterosexual crowd as well.  

The Difference Between You and Me wants to be both, and it ends up being neither. Jesse, the Randy Dean of this story, though she's not nearly as believable or likable as Randy, is completely okay with her Lesbian Identity, and she has been ever since she came out to her hippie parents at 14. Now, I've reached a point in my life where I don't care if I ever read or see another coming out story again. It's a process I can still relate to, and in some ways you never stop coming out, but I really just want to read and see stories about characters who just happen to be lesbians. You know, the way the heterosexual crowd gets to do. The fact that this wasn't a coming out story worked in its favor at first, but it quickly became clear George wasn't going to bother exploring any of the obvious issues raised by Jesse's secret affair with Emily, who is not a stand-in for Evie, but rather for Reese Witherspoon's slightly psychotic character in Election, and instead she spends the entire novel unsubtly sending a message about Wal-Mart and other mega-corproations. Emily is so goddamn perky she may as well be in an acne cream commercial. Her perkiness even extends to a complete embrace of Corporate America, which Jessee and Esther, (yeah, there's a third main character, and she even gets to narrate a few chapters), the hollowest teen hippies ever, are not happy about when it means corporate sponsored school activities. The thing is, though, Emily could have been a fascinating character. Beneath her obvious obsessive-compulsive tendencies and perfectionism there may have been a stifled girl trying desperately to retain some grip on herself and her world. She all but admits she isn't attracted to her boyfriend, and it's Jesse she's really attracted to, even saying they have a cosmic connection. That's a little hyperbolic for a couple who spend the majority of their time making out in an empty bathroom and avoiding conversation, but that just shows how underdeveloped Emily is. She's nothing but a symbol of all the bright, well-meaning people who get duped by Corporate America, while Jesse and Esther symbolize the fight against corporate oppression.

I would be fine with a YA novel about corporate issues and the perils of letting corporations take over schools. Daria explored that issue rather well in the episode "Fizz Ed" when Ms. Li accepts a contract from a soda company to solve Lawndale High's financial problems. It worked because the show didn't take itself too seriously, and we know Daria as a character well enough to expect her dire predictions to come true and be amused by just how batshit things go by the end. We're in on the joke with Daria, whereas with Jesse and Esther, we're just being preached to. It doesn't matter whether or not I agree with them because the characters are such hollow, underdeveloped stereotypes. Furthermore, George doesn't just reduce the issues raised in the book to their simplest forms, you know, making them easy for a teenager of average intelligence to grasp, she reduces them to an annoying Us vs. Them scenario in which anyone who sees the value of a corporation existing is shallow, homophobic, and hypocritical while anyone who wants to take down corporations is true to themselves, has the greater good in mind, and are unsung heroes. I'm not saying I think Wal-Mart should take over the Earth (more than they already have) or don't prefer small businesses to corporations. I'm just saying the way George handles these issues does not make for an interesting or compelling book. She does not know how to blend issues into her fiction, and it shows.

I could have said more, but this is already too long

A simplified look at the Spice Girls’ insane amount of success would most likely lead one to day say it was the result of hitting the public eye at the right time with the right image. Grunge was over. Riot Grrrl was over. Sure, Bikini Kill’s Singles would come in 1998, but that didn’t reignite the spark. Things had changed dramatically in just the two years since Reject All American, and it’s not surprising that the change involved hyper-sexualized, somewhat cartoonish women selling a thought-free brand of feminism. Now, to 9-year-old me, the phrase “Girl Power” meant something, and I’m glad it did. I hadn’t completely been ossified by cynicism, and I didn’t know a damn thing about PR, image building, target marketing, or the overall way everything, including a complex set of ideas and theories like feminism, eventually gets destroyed in the process of becoming a product. So, I was able to blissfully dance all day on the two feet of empty floor in the room I shared with my stepbrother without ever thinking about what I was really buying when I saved up grade card money and bought a Spice Girls album.

I didn’t think to myself, “Wow, Ginger Spice is only wearing black underwear and a shirt with only two buttons in that photo. That’s an odd thing to market to a girl my age.” I thought, “Ginger Spice is fucking pretty. They’re all so pretty. I want to be like that.” The Spice Girls were a very sexual group, both lyrically and in their wardrobe choices, but a lot of that was lost on me then. I didn’t think in terms of sexiness. My precocity didn’t extend that far.  I just knew I had never been attractive or particularly well-liked, and the Spice Girls were both. I was sure the same thing would happen for me if I followed their example closely enough.

There were only a few things standing in my way.

My mother hates all things feminine, and she spent her childhood happily wearing nothing but jeans and softball shirts. I was somewhat different. From the first moment I was allowed to choose my own clothes, I chose the frilliest dresses within reach. For a few years she went along with it, letting me wear my dresses, tights, and Mary Janes constantly. Back then my hair was thin and fell in gentle curls, and I wasn’t wearing the thick, thick glasses that would dominate every school photo from first through sixth grade.

Seriously, I was fucking blind.

Something happened though, and I can’t pinpoint when exactly it happened, but one morning I wasn’t pretty anymore. This isn’t a long-winded compliment grab. My little child prettiness was gone, and that fact was immediately made clear to me by children and adults alike. Of course, physical beauty doesn’t last, it doesn’t make any more or less valuable, lovable, intelligent, the emphasis on women’s appearance is a way the patriarchy oppresses us, etc, but I didn’t know any of that. I had Anne Shirley crying about having red hair, because, you know, it’s the worst fucking hair color a girl can be cursed with apparently, and my classmates driving that point home at least once a week. So, when I first saw Geri Halliwell with her bottle-red Ginger Spice hair, I was overjoyed.

No sooner had I hit my ugly stage then my mother decided it was time to get in touch with my less feminine side. Oh, I hated my clothes. It felt like I was walking around in someone else’s body. That couldn’t be me in those plain jeans and T-shirt. I was made for lace and velvet and  shoes that clicked with every step, not the clunky sneakers my mother insisted I wear. Later on, I embraced a slightly more masculine version of the same look for a while, because I didn’t have the money to even come close to dressing the way I really wanted to and also by that point I was so disassociated from my body I didn’t care. I wanted clothes that projected strength and didn’t invite anyone to look at me, and we all know femininity equal weakness.

Anyway, it wasn’t just that they were all gorgeous. More importantly, it was that they were a tight-knit group of friends. Despite whatever happened after Geri Halliwell’s departure, at the height of my Spice Girls love they represented the possibilities of friendship with other girls. I’ve never been one to have patience with women who claim to be “different” from other women and who “just can’t stand girls; guys are so much better to hang out with.” Sure, some women may prefer male friends, but the majority of the time phrases like that are uttered, it’s the result of internalized misogyny. I could do a whole rant about this issue, but that’s for another post. The point is, the fact that they were a group of women who heavily played up the idea that they were all good friends is still pretty fucking revolutionary for a successful mainstream pop act. They acted as a unit. There was no lead vocalist. There were no photos with one pushed closer to the front; they always appeared on equal footing.

As introverted as I am, I still really want a small group of people to be close to, and that’s never really happened. I’m not saying I don’t have wonderful friends. I do. I just can count them on one hand, and they don’t really overlap. The appeal of the Spice Girls for me, especially after seeing Spiceworld, was that they were like a puzzle, with each member providing a vital piece. They had all the camaraderie of a group that’s known each other for years and spent a lot of time together. I responded to that a lot; it was exactly what I had always wanted. Sure, they were all picked by a record company, but by the time they became international superstars they had already spent a few years living and working together. Things may have fallen apart later on, beginning, I would argue with the departure of Geri Halliwell, but there was a time when they actually enjoyed being in the same room together. I haven't read any criticism specifically targeting the implosion of the group on a personal level, but I'm sure it's out there. "That's what happens when you get a group of girls together, you know." The thing is, no-one ever snits about whether the Beatles liked each other or not at the end--because boys get along always, you know, and when they don't it's respected. Also, no-one ever seems to feel the need to comment on what dicks the Beatles could be either. Those are separate rants, though.

When the Spice Girls were at the height of their success, there really weren’t any girl pop groups to compete with them, and I think that’s very important. It had a lot to do with how unique they ended up being. When the Britney-Christina-Mandy-Jessica-Other Girls I Can’t Remember the Names Of Wars began each girl was defined in opposition to the other girls. You could pick which brand you liked best, but I really never saw that much difference between them. I had the first two Britney Spears albums, but they were played most often by my stepbrother. Singing along to syrupy songs about love didn’t appeal to me, in part because the kind of love I dreamed about was too fucking epic for a 3 minute pop song written by a songwriting team, and also because I was just getting over pop music in general. 

 The Spice Girls' first two albums sound incredibly dated when compared to the pop music of 2012, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad. I'm not saying they're good. They're just not bad. They're catchy as hell, which is Requirement #1 for a pop album. I still remember every word to every song, and I can sing them with ease. One of the things that makes the first two Spice Girls albums so interesting is just how much creative input the Girls themselves had. Officially they're listed as "co-writers", but even that's kind of impressive. According to Geri Halliwell's memoir If Only the ideas and most of the lyrics for their first album were thought up while the Girls were sharing a house and waiting for the record company to do something with the group it had assembled. Now, they and their team of professionals were not gifted songwriters. You won't find lyrics worthy of Bob Dylan or Tori Amos, but the songs were never meant to be works of art. Maybe the Girls themselves would disagree, and after reading If Only I wouldn't be surprised if Geri Halliwell disagreed. If taken for what they were intended to be, their songs are actually pretty dark and interesting in comparison to other pop songs, especially most of what I hear on the radio these days. I wouldn't say they were a feminist group, but there are definitely feminist elements at work, even if that wasn't the original intention. 

They never begged for male attention. They always set the terms, and they always came from a place of confidence. Repeatedly they refer to a strong support system of female friends, and again, I can't stress how fucking revolutionary that is. There are no songs about how far they'll go to get the guy, no songs about that bitch who took him away, no Madonna/Whore complex bullshit. They sang sexual songs that weren't dirty. The Girls were all at least 23 when their rise to fame began. It makes sense for them to approach sex and relationships from a perspective a 16 year-old wouldn't, and they did. They didn't apologize about having sexual desires nor did they use them to make some bogus statement about how "empowering" it is to fuck someone. Listening to "2 Become 1" now, I hear a lot of corniness in the lyrics, but I'm still a little impressed that a mainstream pop group managed to make a song about safe sex sound so classy and romantic (by pop music standards.) I can't help but think if one of them had made a foray into the glorious land of the lesbians and felt the urge to write a song about it what they ended up with wouldn't have been nearly as offensive and just plain awful as Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl."


Which brings me to my last point. When women get together in groups without men bad things happen. Homophobia is a tool of sexism, after all, and I understood that before I read Suzanne Pharr, even if I couldn’t put it so articulately. For me, loving the Spice Girls was an act of rebellion, and they'll always have a special place in my fangirl heart for that very reason. Every time I walk into one of those "antique malls" and see a booth full of pop culture memorabilia that includes Spice Girls merchandise I get a little giddy, and for a moment I'm 9 years old again, only this time I can have all the campy Girl Power-infused goodness I want. My mother didn't spend much time objecting to the content of the Spice Girls' songs--she never actually listened to one, as far as I know--or the skimpiness of their clothes. My mother is too unique for that. Instead she focused her criticism on a few lesbian rumors she'd heard. Yes, dear readers, my mother lectured me endlessly about liking a pop group rumored to have lesbians in it, and when that had no effect--well, that's a kind of twisted story. Suffice it to say if my mother could have sent me to True Directions, she would have. I find it incredibly ironic how gay I turned out considering her efforts began well before I reached the age of sexual awakening.

I may do a post reviewing If Only, which was a surprisingly good book, if anyone's interested. 

Movie Vs Book Vol 1: Whip It

I really didn’t like Juno. I avoided watching it the first year it was out because of all the hype, but one afternoon in 2010, during the Georgia equivalent of a blizzard, I found myself watching it, and I must say the experience was pleasantly surprising. Ellen Paige won me over immediately, and although I’ve read a lot of reviews criticizing the movie for making the characters, hers especially, too clever and too interested in things that predate them, that’s one criticism I still vehemently disagree with. When I was 16, I knew people who talked like Juno. My best friend talked like Juno. I talked like Juno. At one point we decided to combine 1920s and 1960s slang terms to create a whole new style, but that project never really went anywhere. The point is, Juno’s character is the one who seems the most real, and that’s got a lot to do with Ellen Paige, who manages to make her seem really smart and mature but not cynical. I have to admit, I find a heroine whose top three bands are Iggy and the Stooges, The Runaways, and Patti Smith and yet who is still shocked and upset when she discovers Jason Bateman’s character is actually a douchebag to be incredibly refreshing. As much as I hate The Privilege, I like that an obviously privileged heroine is actually acting like one in this movie.

That being said, I still really don’t like it. After watching it a second time it hit me just how in love with itself this movie is, and as much as I enjoy the scene where Juno and Mark play an acoustic cover of “Doll Parts” it just isn’t enough to overcome the smugness that permeates just about every other scene.

All that was to say, when I heard about Whip It I had high hopes based solely on the fact that it starred Ellen Paige. I didn’t even need to know it was about an all-women roller derby league, an “alternative” female coming of age story, or even that it actually had a solid female friendship at its core (What? Those can’t exist in movies with straight women!). I actually wasn’t disappointed by it, which made the $7 I paid for the DVD a bargain. 

This is one of this movies that gets so many things right it's easy to forgive what it gets wrong. I'm only mildly annoyed by the bucket of Hipster Lite that was thrown onto Paige's character Bliss, and as with Juno, that has everything to do with Paige's acting. She takes what could easily have been an irritating, spineless character and makes her into a shy, misunderstood, and (mildly) conflicted character. When the Popular Kids decide it would be clever to (again, mildly) taunt her by asking if she's "alternative now" her response is, "Alternative to what?" That's not a brilliant line. That's not a particularly memorable line. That's not even a great comeback for a regular person who doesn't have a professional writing her dialogue, though it's not the worst I've heard, but the way Paige says it makes it sound brilliant. Her obvious confusion about just the hell they're trying to accomplish--Is it a real question? Is she supposed to be insulted?-- completely sells the moment. That's how a lot of moments in this movie go. The script isn't bad, but if it were in the hands of different actors its flaws would shine through a lot sooner. 

So, when I found the Shauna Cross YA novel this movie is based on I wasted $1 on it. Why not? It can't be that bad, I thought. I liked the movie. 

I was right. It isn't that bad. It's fucking awful. I was skeptical about Drew Barrymore as a director, but it turns out she's actually the reason this movie turned out as well as it did. Cross wrote the screenplay, but based on the novel it's clear who made this story as likeable as it is.

The most logical place to begin with this book is with Bliss. At the beginning of the movie she's soft-spoken and shy, but it's clear there's more to her than what most people see, which makes her transformation into badass Derby Girl something the audience cheers on. We want to see her find her voice almost as much as she wants to find it. My mother never put me in beauty pageants, but she did push me really hard for as long as I can remember to succeed academically. Like Bliss, I didn't really complain about it, mostly because I knew she was trying to shove me out of the abyss. The movie makes clear that's exactly what Bliss's mother is trying to do for her, and while I have issues with pageants, the fact is she's always presented as stable, loving parent who thinks that's the best way to help her daughter succeed. We don't see Bliss have a truly confrontational moment with her mother about her aversion to life as a pageant star until her roller derby career is threatened, and everything about the scene works. She sounds like a teenage girl struggling to assert an identity that hasn't even finished forming, which is exactly how she should sound. She's slowly and painfully beginning to become herself and trying not to hurt the people she loves in the process.


 The Bliss of the novel, on the other hand, is decidedly different. 

I fucking hate her. 

On a more objective note, her character in the novel was a disappointment when compared to her character in the film. I expected there to be differences, but I wasn't prepared for the movie to be an improvement. That has only happened twice that I can think of. First it happened with Girl Interrupted, but I wasn't too upset about it because Susanna Kaysen's book isn't a linear narrative; it's more of a series of vignettes. A lot had to be changed to make it into a Hollywood movie starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. The second time it happened was with Revolutionary Road, and I'm tempted to say that's just because it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and those two have enough chemistry to convince me to buy a ticket to watch them watch paint dry. My love for them individually is pretty great, but my love for them as a couple reaches frightening, not to mention embarrassing, heights.


Back to the point. While there is a certain amount of authenticity to Cross's writing of Bliss in the book, there's nothing likeable about her. The story is narrated by her, and while her voice is interesting at times, it's almost impossible to distinguish it from countless other "typical" teenage girl narrators in YA fiction. I could use a lot of great adjective to describe her, but the best way to sum up her character is to say she's bratty and naive. Now, I don't mind the naivete; I like when 16 year olds act like 16 year olds. As many completely batshit experiences as I had had by 16, and as mature as I was at that age, I was still pretty fucking naive at times, and I've got a few stories to illustrate that. That being said, there's a difference between writing a teenager who doesn't act and sound like 25 year old and writing a teenager who epitomizes every stereotype in existence. I find it especially frustrating because there are so few substantive heroines in mainstream YA fiction. Furthermore, there are no "alternative" heroines in mainstream YA fiction that I can think of aside from Mia in the Princess Diaries series and Samantha from the All-American Girl series. They're all pretty standard representations of what adults who market to teenagers think teenage girls act like--which is to say, they're misogynistic caricatures more often than not. In some cases, like Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicolson series, this actually works. The thing that makes that series work though is the fact that it's almost a parody of the whole genre. Georgia Nicolson is an updated, female version of Adrian Mole, who is the only YA male main character who is as painfully naive and self-centered as most YA female main characters that I've come across. 


I'll just come right out and say I read a lot of YA fiction aimed at teenage girls at one point. Each book was the literary equivalent of eating a whole box of eclairs in one sitting: very satisfying but horrible for me. It's a topic for another post, though. 

Unlike in the movie, the Bliss of the novel is mean-spirited. She spends half the book complaining about her parents not understanding her and how "totally uncool" they are, which, okay, she's 16, fine, but the problem is we're never shown anything that justifies her supposed unhappiness. I get I'm not the target audience for this book, and when I was 16 I doubt I would have liked it. The thing is, a lot of people in their late teens and early twenties still read YA fiction and almost nothing else. It's sad,. but true. I went to college with more people like that than I could count, which probably had a lot to do with why college was so goddamn disappointing. So, that makes the representation of women and girls in YA fiction even more important because the way these people view women and girls will be affected by these books. It will perpetuate misogynistic stereotypes about how women behave. That doesn't mean every heroine has to be a paragon of maturity or goodness or intelligence. It just means they need to be well-rounded, interesting, and relatable--and not just to the women who fantasize about finding a boyfriend who will magically make all their problems go away. 


The brings me to my last few points. In both versions the love interest is a douche bag, and it's rather obvious to everyone but Bliss. The thing I really like about both versions though is they end with her getting over him, in spite of, to quote the movie, "giving him everything." Now, this phrasing carries some heavy implications, most obviously that the most important thing a woman can ever do is let a man be the one to sleep with her for the first time. I'm not saying there isn't usually some kind of emotional connection between a person and the person they sleep with for the first time because there almost always is, if not before than after for at least one of them. Nothing exists in a vacuum. The problem comes when it's only female characters who do all the talking about "giving everything." It's only female virginity that's important. No-one gives a flying fuck about a guy's virginity. That's not to say individual guys don't have emotional connections to the women they sleep with; it's just to say the culture at large pretends they don't and would have us believe they don't--unless it's The Girl They Love. You know, the Future Wife character. Sex with her means something; those others, if there were any, were just whores. He's already forgotten their names. The thing both the book and movie get right, though, is Bliss is devastated by her boyfriend's betrayal but she grows up a little and moves on in the end. In the book she's even allowed to talk about how much she enjoyed sex, which in this strange world of Sexual Experimentation and Kink = Empowerment for Women (where are you Shulamith Firestone?) that seems like something I shouldn't have to praise, but the sad truth is most stories about young women still place sex in the Only If You're In Love box, which is problematic since there aren't really any stories aimed at men like that. 


Okay, two more things, and I'll stop pontificating. These are two of my favorite moments from each. In the book there's a scene where Bliss is going through a stack of records at a party. She finds The Velvet Underground and Nico. "What's coming out of the stereo is like a genre unto itself, a charming, fucked-up fairy tale that immediately breaks my heart in all the best ways" is her description of the event. I don't think I need to explain why I love this scene, or why I love how obsessed with music the book version of Bliss is. I want more heroines with actual interests. Seriously. We fucking need them. 

The last thing is a scene from the movie. It happens in the book as well, but it's a lot more satisfying in the movie.  It comes in around the halfway point, and it's what happens when Bliss's bullies meet Babe Ruthless. I've always had a problem with female characters not meeting their bullies head-on (Yay repressed female anger!), and this scene just makes me happy.