You're Not Hard Core Unless You Live Hard Core

I’ve seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  If that isn’t very impressive, I saw all of them many years before the advent of DVD.  That means that I watched nearly all of them when they first aired on network TV, and all the rest I had to catch during the rerun season.  (I saw every episode before the series was playing in syndication for six hours a day on Spike, G4, etc.)

Still, these days it doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment to have watched every episode of a show.  Because of DVD and the internet, even casual fans of a show can see it all.  If a 10 year old kid in the early 90s was hard-core by faithfully tuning in every week, the digital age has completely changed what it means to be hard-core.

This phenomenon is even more apparent as Laura and I have been working our way through Battlestar Galactica.  (Yes, I like Sci-fi and I guess that makes me a nerd.  I compensate by trying extra hard to be cool and by subsequently developing a complex.)  At this point, it’s basically a given that a fan will have seen every episode.  Real fans, I’m discovering by watching the BSG special features, go online and participate in online communities.  They go to conventions and have action figures.  Some of them even start marriages based on their love of the TV show. 

While science fiction TV probably has an unusually devoted fan base, the bar seems to have risen for what it means to be a fan of anything.  Other TV shows like The Office or American Idol have their own cadre of devoted fans, as do performers like Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers.  In each case being a fan of these phenomena doesn’t mean simply putting up a poster or talking about the characters with your friends.  Instead, it means reading about them online, knowing back-stories (that were never a part of the show/public persona/etc), and finally immersing yourself in the culture of the show or performer.  Basically, fans today are more hard-core than ever before because they’re living within the culture of their obsession. 

The result of all this hyper-fandom is that people know a lot about the things they love and, more importantly, build their communities around those things.  One hundred years ago for example, if you loved the theater, you might go every once in a while but you’d still have to go home to friends, family, and neighbors who wouldn’t necessarily share your particular interests.  Today on the other hand you can go to a cultural event and then return to people who are connected to you because of that event.  In other words your friends, family, and neighbors are determined more by your interests today than ever before.  Battlestar Galactica or American Idol aren’t just shows, they're lifestyles.

Ultimately, the communities created by fans are places where people think long and hard about what culture means to them.  I wrote before about how TV and movies might be more important than reading, but I think that the real issue here is simply that the conveyances of culture are currently visual and digital, as opposed to literary or theatrical.  With that shift our society may have lost some things (a literacy in the art forms of the past, for example), but I also believe that we’ve gained a great deal as well.  I may have a harder time being a hard-core fan (it really requires so much more work), but I think it’s good that someone is picking apart the meaning of just about everything.   

Sex, Equality, and Rock and Roll

This coming weekend my band, Electron Deception, is playing at a show featuring all female-fronted bands.  For a lot of people, it’ll probably just seem like another local music show in Provo.  What many won’t realize, however, is just how remarkable it is to get three female fronted bands together.

 

Despite the superficially liberal leanings of many musicians, rock music critics have widely observed trends of masculine dominance, anti-feminism, and even misogyny.  Indeed, rock and roll is a “male form” and rarely, if ever, points to gender equality.  (If you want more information to support these assertions click here, or if you have a BYU ID, here.)  If this research isn’t enough, just watch some music videos.  Ask yourself A) how many feature women in lead roles (probably fewer than feature men), and B) how many of those that feature women don’t depict them as sex objects (probably close to none). 

 

Of course, gender inequality in music (as in most industries) is nothing new, but what is surprising is that these trends are as easily observed in local music as they are on the national stage.  In fact, at least in Provo (and despite the city’s strong music scene), the gender gap is even wider than it is in the larger music community; very few bands include women, and many of those that do give them minor roles or even seemingly use them as “eye candy” for male fans.

 

In light of all this, my band’s upcoming show seems like a significant assertion of femininity. Despite the fact that male performers will still outnumber females, women will occupy the most prominent positions and the whole event was organized by one of the band’s female vocalist.  Yet while these facts lead me to believe that music (and specifically local music in Provo) is moving toward greater gender equality, this particular show still includes some strikingly examples of machismo.  What’s even more alarming is that I have probably been the biggest culprit of this. 

 

Probably the best example of this phenomenon is the poster that I made for the show. 

Though it’s not particularly racy, it obviously relies Laura’s image and sexuality as a marketing tool (the design was admittedly inspired, at least partially, by classic pin-up posters).  In addition, the fact that the female lead singers of the bands are called “girls,” as opposed to “women,” further calls into question the show's claim to gender equality.  If other posters of ours have been less extreme in this regard, they've also worked along similar lines. 

In the end then, what started out as a potential night of feminist assertion has shaped up as a night to watch hot chicks.  If that wasn’t an obvious enough problem by itself, a bigger one might be that everyone has loved our posters, men and women alike.  I love our posters, and I’ll probably make more like them.  Though I’m readily willing to admit that making posters like ours—or calling something a “girl show”—might not promote gender equality, the bottom line is that it is effective.  People like it, remember it, and if our end goal is to get people to listen to our music, it’s something we almost have to do. 

 

All this then begs the question: can women not be objectified in rock/pop music?  (For that matter, can men?)  I know that as Laura and I have discussed stage presence, for example, I’ve been surprised to realize there are significantly fewer things for a female to do on stage than there are for a male.  Basically, it generally boils down to something like “be sexier” or “wear sexier clothes” or “do heavier make up” or something like that.  Most of these options are actually open to male rock musicians (at least within a certain genre), but for females they’re often times the only options.  Again, like the posters, these things may represent a questionable ideology, but they’re also effective. 

 

Ultimately, this upcoming concert will come and go without many people thinking about these issues.  It’ll be just one more local show (albeit a fun one).  Yet even as a “girl show” it will still be an anomaly (as everything else must, by implication, be boy shows) and in that light, it probably signals a trend toward something.  Whether it’s toward greater equality or objectification remains to be seen.

Lady Gaga/Parodic Pop

Lady Gaga is a joke.  Not a joke like she’s-so-bad-she-shouldn’t-be-taken-seriously, or a joke like a comedy act (like Flight of the Concords).  No, Lady Gaga is a joke in the sense that her career is a carefully plotted parody of popular music.  And lest I be unclear here, I love that about her. 

 

The Lady Gaga aesthetic is infused with doses of playfully self-referential pop culture packaged in typical dance pop.  If the music itself appears fairly superficial, so does just about everything on the mainstream side of that genre.  However, Lady Gaga’s music brings a bizarre added element to the mix.  For example, the lyrics for “Just Dance” include lines like “How does he twist the dance?/Can’t find a drink, oh man/Where are my keys? I lost my phone.”  The rest of the song pretty much keeps up the same tone, but the point is that it isn’t just about the triviality of teen love or losing a boyfriend or whatever, its about losing phones and keys.  Its about forgetting the name of a club.  Its about all sorts of extreme trivialities that are just too superficial to be taken seriously.  This isn’t Britney Spears singing about whatever Britney Spears sings about, but rather Lady Gaga making fun of whatever Britney Spears sings about.  

 

Other songs take on pop music’s biggest theme: sex.  For example, take “Love Games” which includes the lyrics “Lets have some fun, this beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.”  Repeat over and over and you get one of the most deliciously idiotic choruses I can think of.  Yet that’s exactly what Lady Gaga does and the result is simply too ridiculous to be accepted at face value.  Instead, this song is a kind of absurd postmodern crescendo more common to silly mainstream hip-hop than teen driven dance pop. 

 

It’s only natural that the current music environment would produce someone like Lady Gaga. After Roy Lichtenstein, for example, comic books would never be the same and eventually the medium turned out Watchmen as both a self-commentary and the best example of itself. Similarly, Lady Gaga both epitomizes pop music while exposing its frivolities.  Once someone like Britney Spears (among others) appears completely naked in a music video there isn’t really anywhere to push the envelope except into either straight-up porn or postmodernity.  Lady Gaga goes postmodern then (though some might argue that postmodernism and porn have a lot in common).  

 

Other recording artists have attempted what Lady Gaga is doing, but to varied results.  A group like Flight of the Conchords certainly shows affection toward and understanding of popular music, but still get written off as a “comedy act.”  Other bands produce isolated crititques of pop culture, but devote their careers to making more traditional music (for example Mates of State have an excellent video that parodies the conventions of rap music videos).  What makes Lady Gaga stand out, on the other hand, is that she produces music that appeals to pop fans while still including a deeper, more critically engaging layer.  (Even if that layer is critically engaging because of its uber inanity.)

 

Obvioulsy Lady Gaga isn’t Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol.  She isn’t another Madonna or even Britney Spears.  Still, she has managed to produce marketable music while operating in the distant shadow of these early pop art predecessors.  In this sense she may have more in common with Stephen Colbert or Sacha Baron Cohen/Borat/Bruno as she blurs the boundary between reality and fiction, music and postmodernism.  Still, that’s enough for me to lean toward the speaker and start tapping my foot every time I hear her music on the radio.