Bringing context and critique to the cultural moment. Deep dives, reviews, and debate encouraged.
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© 2020 Relevant Protocols Inc.
Bringing context and critique to the cultural moment. Deep dives, reviews, and debate encouraged.
40652 Members
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© 2020 Relevant Protocols Inc.
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HOUSE OF MIRRORS Sasha Geffen on Willow and Olivia Rodrigo. "IN THE FIRST OF TWO VIDEOS for her song “Transparent Soul,” Willow thrashes in a featureless white room flooded bluntly with light. The song’s lyrics are full of barbs launched at a disappointing “you,” but Willow is alone in this visual capsule. She sings into and kicks at the fish-eye lens set on the ground, then backs herself into a corner of the claustrophobic box, whose walls have suddenly sprouted security cameras. She aims one at the viewer, threatening us with a reciprocal gaze. " "The more punk went pop, the more it sought to differentiate itself from its chartmates. As formerly marginal groups like Blink-182 and Green Day began sharing airwaves with more explicitly manufactured pop acts like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, they clung to an imagined authenticity for self-definition. Blink-182’s 2000 video for “All the Small Things” most clearly illustrates this schism: The three group members dress up like teen idols, gazing at the camera in mimicry of pop videos’ softened sexuality. In the shots where they’re not in genre drag, Blink-182 revert to the usual scrappy boyishness, hammering away on their guitars and drums, real again in their ruckus. Avril Lavigne’s 2002 songs “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” similarly positioned the young star as a girl realer than the rest. Paramore’s 2007 video for “Misery Business” shows Hayley Williams and her group competing in a battle of the bands while a girl in a teal dress stalks their high school, bullying everyone in her path. At the end of the video, Williams confronts the villain, yanking silicone inserts out of her bra and wiping off her vampy makeup in one swoop. Her image deflated, the more feminine girl starts crying while Williams, in her flame-orange scene hair, scampers off with the boys. "
HOUSE OF MIRRORS Sasha Geffen on Willow and Olivia Rodrigo. "IN THE FIRST OF TWO VIDEOS for her song “Transparent Soul,” Willow thrashes in a featureless white room flooded bluntly with light. The song’s lyrics are full of barbs launched at a disappointing “you,” but Willow is alone in this visual capsule. She sings into and kicks at the fish-eye lens set on the ground, then backs herself into a corner of the claustrophobic box, whose walls have suddenly sprouted security cameras. She aims one at the viewer, threatening us with a reciprocal gaze. " "The more punk went pop, the more it sought to differentiate itself from its chartmates. As formerly marginal groups like Blink-182 and Green Day began sharing airwaves with more explicitly manufactured pop acts like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, they clung to an imagined authenticity for self-definition. Blink-182’s 2000 video for “All the Small Things” most clearly illustrates this schism: The three group members dress up like teen idols, gazing at the camera in mimicry of pop videos’ softened sexuality. In the shots where they’re not in genre drag, Blink-182 revert to the usual scrappy boyishness, hammering away on their guitars and drums, real again in their ruckus. Avril Lavigne’s 2002 songs “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” similarly positioned the young star as a girl realer than the rest. Paramore’s 2007 video for “Misery Business” shows Hayley Williams and her group competing in a battle of the bands while a girl in a teal dress stalks their high school, bullying everyone in her path. At the end of the video, Williams confronts the villain, yanking silicone inserts out of her bra and wiping off her vampy makeup in one swoop. Her image deflated, the more feminine girl starts crying while Williams, in her flame-orange scene hair, scampers off with the boys. "
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