Pitchfork Continually Surprised by Talented Women

by anna

Like many music enthusiasts in the world, I have a love/hate relationship with Pitchfork. My most exhilarating encounters with music criticism occurred while reading Brent DiCrescenzo’s outrageous (yet emotionally stirring!!!) reviews while I was still in high school. Pitchfork has informed the way I conceptualize music; it created the first paradigm for richly informed, detailed, obsessive music criticism, thereby driving the blurb-driven snark machines of Rolling Stone and Spin into the bitter, bitter dirt of irrelevance.  Also, Pitchfork has contributed to my vision for a blog like this one, in which I deconstruct a Beyonce single in like 1000 words.

Back in 2005, DiCrescenzo wrote a column chronicling various indie prototypes created in Pfork’s reviews, among them an intellectual female artist known as “The Stef,” and the freak-man-boy known as “The Sloth.” In it, he describes Pitchfork writer’s analyses (both underlying and upfront) of women musicians:

Specifically, writers paint Fiona Apple and Cat Power’s Chan Marshall as hormonally capricious victim-savants and read all their lyrics like Psy.D parents unlocking a daughter’s pink diary, while Devendra Banhart’s jabberwocky skews as fecund genius.

and later…

When convenient, male songwriters slip into omniscient skin to amuse and illuminate, while female songwriters meddle in their first-person emotions, unable to escape the black hole of their romantic astrology. Naturally, emotional analysis always overshadows technical musicianship in Stef reviews.

In other words, reviewers focus on the emotional qualities of women artists’ work, while they are more generous with men, granting them agency over their identity.

Too bad no one ever heeded his words over at the magazine. Despite Pfork’s “Best New Music” section featuring a larger proportion of women-led acts than perhaps ever before, the language of the reviews stirs in me a reaction similar to that of feminist bloggers‘ responses to The New Republic’s recent profile of Sonya Sotomayor. (That’s a whole ‘nother controversy, but one that revolves around the reading of a female subject through a lens of motherhood and unhinged emotionality.) Do a close, or fuck, a distant reading of some of these reviews, and all the acceptable feminine identities are neatly rolled out in a matter of four goddamn sentences, then the woman artist in question will be shoved into each and every niche, until she is a sex symbol, a princess (!!), a mother, and an earth-goddess.

So, czech out the latest example, from the review of St. Vincent’s Actor.

Annie Clark, the musician otherwise known as St. Vincent, projects an aura of eerie perfection– beautiful, poised, good-humored, and well-adjusted to a degree uncommon for rock performers, let alone ordinary people. She’s clearly not oblivious to her disarming qualities. On the covers of both her albums, her wide eyes and porcelain features give her the appearance of a cartoon princess come to life, and in the songs contained therein, she sings with the measured, patient tones of a benevolent, maternal authority figure. The thing that separates Clark from any number of earth mother Lilith Fair types, however, is her eagerness to subvert that effect. Her album covers may showcase her pretty face, but her blank expression and the tight framing leave the images feeling uncomfortably ambiguous. Her voice and arrangements are often mellow and soothing, but those sounds mainly serve as context as she exposes undercurrents of anxiety and discomfort hidden just beneath a gorgeous façade.

Clearly, St. Vincent has an authoritative presence; but the critic here qualifies her assertive vocal tendencies as “maternal,” for no reason I can tell other than Ms. Clark has a woman’s voice. And, Lilith Fair? I don’t hear much 90’s lesbian music going on here; St. Vincent is more akin to those indie musicians pushing the classical envelope. Again, the only thing I imagine would conjure such a comparison would be her womanly voice.

Also, she’s a pretty pretty princess.

If Dicrescenzo is arguing that critics assume an insulting lack of agency on the behalf of women artists’ identities, this review pats St. Vincent on the back for being shifty; she has stealthily avoided all the traps pfork has set up for her.

Behold:

With that in mind, the album is perfectly titled, as Actor proves St. Vincent as an artist capable of crafting believable, complicated characters with compassion, insight, and exacting skill.

“Thanks, guys! I am capable!” I’m certain that’s what Ms. Clark was thinking when she read that.

You know who else is capable? Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan. Check out the last sentence of the recent review of Two Suns:

Not only does Khan hold her own, there are moments when she holds his, too [on the song The Big Sleep]. That she’s capable of doing so is evidence enough that we should be paying attention.

Apparently Pfork needs a lot of proof from the women artists they review. I find it uncanny, not to mention lazy, that these two reviews end almost identically. Furthermore, the fact that Khan “holds her own” with a man is supposed to prove to us we can pay attention now? Thanks for the permission.

Then again, I am relieved that the critic even came to that conclusion, given his best efforts to totally undermine the seriousness or aesthetic worth of Bat For Lashes in his opening sentence:

Natasha Khan likes pretty things: fur, gold, melody, the moon, feathers, things that sparkle, chords that resolve.

The thing I am most shocked about is the weird lack of awareness running through these articles. Aren’t these music critic dudes at all sensitive to the potentially cringe-inducing usage of words like, “capable” or “pretty” or “maternal?” Didn’t these hip young men ever take a gender studies class? Don’t their girlfriends get annoyed with them? Have they ever talked to a woman?

I am not proposing censorship, I am proposing a little sensitivity. I am delighted that women artists are being reviewed favorably by Pfork, but I won’t be satisfied until they apply the language they use in reviews of dude bands/acts to the womenfolk.

It’s hard out here for a man…

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for my campus paper about a ridiculous new survey- the 50 manliest cities in America. Yup, you read that right. You see, not content with shoving sexist bullshit down the throats of men around this country, we’ve taken to classifying cities based on how manly they are. And how exactly does one come up with such a ranking? Observe the categories-

Sports

Manly lifestyle (whatever that means)

Concentration of manly retail stores

Manly Magazine Subscriptions

Salty Snack Sales (um…..)

Anything strike you as particularly odd as you read this? Maybe the fact that last time I checked, women also watch sports, visit Home Depot and eat salty snacks? It’s things like these that reinforce how sexism isn’t just a women’s issue. Indeed, it never has been but yet, feminism hasn’t really done much to address artificial constructions of masculinity. In my column, I wrote-

While a number of gender studies classes focus on the effect that sexism has on women, little time is devoted to studying its effects on men. This despite the fact that men are victims of a culture that infantilizes them and reduces them to one of two caricatures: the beer guzzling and intellectually deficient Homer Simpson or the slacker with grade-school humor, as depicted in every (awful) Seth Rogen film.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject lately thanks to the popularity of this new reference in pop culture- bromance, or as Urban Dictionary puts it, “the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males.” There are several problematic things about this term. For one, it attempts to contextualize and rationalize a close relationship between two straight men, as if there is something wrong with maintaining such a bond. Of course, it also reveals a deeper issue- the fear that any relationship between two men will be construed as homosexual in nature. By slapping on a cutesy label like bromance, we are effectively silencing such fears. It seems then that straight men sharing close relationships with other straight men chips away at what we traditionally perceive of as masculinity- stoicism and a lack of emotions. This makes us deeply uncomfortable so we take to gender policing. And, in case you were wondering, the manliest city in America is Nashville. 

-Indira

A GOOD BLOG COMIN YOUR WAY!

Here in Chicago, there is a team of us starting a website and quarterly magazine called “Wisecrack: Feminism & Comedy.” Already we’re on the first page of google when you type “feminism & comedy” into the search engine, which shows the kind of void we are filling here.

Our website is currently under construction but should be up by next Wednesday. It is:

wisecrackmagazine.com

For now, you should check out our blog, which features articles by me and Indira along with numerous posts about things relating to feminism & comedy:

wisecrackzine.blogspot.com

Check them out and please keep your eye on us! We’re up and coming!

-anna

ps, we also have a twitter.

Feminism and the Philosophy of Relativity

by anna

Not too long ago I read Katha Pollitt’s “Learning to Drive,” a collection of essays and memoirs by The Nation columnist and prominent feminist.

I was particularly struck by a few lines, something I have consistently mulled over during my past years as a feminist activist, and something I believe worthy of all feminists’ consideration:

“These days anything is feminist as long as you ‘choose’ it … no matter how dangerous or silly or servile or self-destructive it is.”

This was quoted last week in Linda Hirshman’s article for Slate,  “Crazy Love, Crazy Choices.” Hirshman, in her characteristically assertive manner, took the hard-line on how women should act when they find themselves in abusive relationships. She was responding to Leslie Morgan Steiner’s new book Crazy Love, which chronicle’s the author’s experiences with an abusive husband.

To be precise, Hirshman says, “The current love affair with understanding stops feminists from calling victims on taking responsibility for their own well-being.”

I know Hirshman is very controversial and comes across as a tad intolerant (especially when it comes to her commentary on women’s career issues). But what I admire about her is her willingness to take a strong, unequivocal position on certain issues. However, her ideas can sometimes look like Stalinism to feminism’s current “anything goes” policy.

But what both Pollitt and Hirshman have responded to in some form or another is the relativity of popular feminist thought. To rephrase both Hirshman and Pollitt, I think what they are objecting to is the idea that “if a woman makes a choice, it’s right because a woman made that choice.” This idea is intellectually lazy, a tautology, an emptiness at the hole of feminist thought.

Feminism no longer is a united ideology; feminists can hardly agree on common goals, much less a common system of thought that might guide us to a better philosophy. We don’t need angry judgment against women from feminism, but we do need more dramatic guidelines to help us figure out where we’re going. We are becoming an umbrella party for all liberal causes; I would like us to remain potent and strong, with focused, marked criticisms and policy proposals for our society.

As Hirshman’s utterances were pretty much a condemnation and judgment of one woman’s actions in regards to her abusive husband, let me just distance myself and say I still don’t know how to approach that topic. I do think the victim has a responsibility to take care of him/herself, but I also don’t think we can universally declare that the abused party is wrong and stupid when they do not to leave their abusers.

I know feminism has distanced itself from the world of black and white moral thinking, and for good reason. Certain types of old logic are contrary to feminism and women’s progress. But in our efforts to destroy old categories, it seems we have destroyed a lot of other things too, among them the ability to come up with a coherent ideology. More on this later.

Star Trek: The Feminist Generation

I look concerned because I do not want to be dismissed.

The XX Factor, Slate’s feminist blog and one of the Internet’s foremost feminist blogs, recently ran an interesting analysis of the show Battlestar Gallactica, and asked if the show is indeed as feminist as it is purported to be. The post veers off from Battlestar and does a spot-on critique of women’s role in the genre of science fiction. However, I’ve got a bone to pick with their mention of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which seems to me an all-too-quick dismissal of the show based on the attire of Deanna Troi.

To fans, this show is simply known as TNG, and I will refer to it as such here on out. I think now and will think forever that TNG is the most politically progressive thing ever shown on television. For those who have not had the pleasure of watching it, please understand that TNG is not about shooting lasers at aliens or fantastic battles in space (well, most of the time). The show is a sincere study of the questions of the universe, including but not limited to: What is being? How do we define humanity? What is the ultimate goal of human existence? It grapples with the delicate balances of interpersonal relationships. It examines the role of humanitarian intervention and asks how best to proceed with interplanetary diplomacy with concern for cultural difference. In short, this show is deep.

As for its take on gender, an old friend once pointed out to me that all the main women characters have jobs that could fall into a stereotyped category, such as care-giver (doctor) or feelings-examiner (counseler).

And as XX points out, Deanna is quite scantily clad, at least in the first season (she is wearing a rather 60’s looking mini-dress), but this omits the fact that Tasha Yar is the CHIEF OF SECURITY in the first season. That’s right–a woman is the pre-Warf head of security! And she’s not just a man in a woman’s body–she can be sexy if she wants to and her toughness is derived from escaping the rape gangs on her civil war-torn home planet. One of the most feminist episodes has to be “Code of Honor” (although, unfortunately, this episode is rather racist, employing stereotypes of macho tribal cultures to heighten our sense of the Enterprises’ progressive attitudes toward gender).

When the macho leader of the planet arrives on the Enterprise to discuss giving the Federation a much-needed vaccine, he becomes enchanted by Tasha Yar’s strength. He explains that on his planet, women aren’t in positions of military power. So he kidnaps Tasha and plans to make her his lover. On the macho tribe planet, Tasha goes to battle with leaders lover (and financier) and she TRIUMPHS with weapons she’s never even practiced with before! Jean Luc Picard politely explains to the leader that where he is from, people believe women are just as strong and smart as men. Other characters snicker about the barbarism of a people who could possess such an antiquated attitude.

The genius of the show is that the characters’ beliefs are so far beyond thinking of the world in terms of gender difference that it demeans the very idea of sexism. It boldly goes into a new future, where debate is no longer even necessary; it just takes gender equity (the idea AND its practice) for granted, as though it is now and ever shall be the truth. Which it should be.

Too bad Tasha is portrayed by terrible, humorless actor Denise Crosby (who, after being kicked out during the first season, mysteriously returns a few years later to play a Romulan [who turns out to be Tasha Yar's daughter in a parallel universe, or something like that]). ANYWAY! If you’ve seen nearly every one of the 178 episodes, explaining the plot begins to be a problem.

TNG also tactfully avoids sex and romantic entanglement beyond the PG-13 rating. All characters prioritize their careers above romance, including the women. Women are also to be observed in the highest ranks of Star Fleet, thank you very much.

Finally, the beloved Deanna Troi, though something of a sensitive, new age 90’s stereotype of a person, is a lovely character who derives strength, wisdom and even power from her emotional prowess. We are supposed to value her for her mind and her more stereotypicall feminine characteristics, which I think is unusual today. The sung heroines of the hour are often ones who just act like men. In later seasons, Deanna even decides to train in order to captain the ship, if need be. She learns all the technical stuff women aren’t supposed to learn and even trains in combat, all while maintaining her rather feminine mystique.

In other words, TNG is not sexist, but a nuanced portrayal of a team of characters. Most of the time.

-Anna

I’m not a feminist but…

As the leader of a feminist group on campus, if there was ever a phrase I heard commonly, it was this. I never quite understood it- otherwise intelligent women who professed their support for things like pay equity, reproductive rights and ending violence against women but refusing to call them feminists. What gives? To be sure, some of it is just confusion over what the label entails.

Feminism as a movement has often been hijacked by radicals, meaning different things to different people. On the one hand, women like Ann Coulter and Phyllis Schlafly proudly call themselves feminists, even though their careers have been founded on misogyny and anti-woman policies. By the same token, you have some crazies who think that pornography and stripping are actually “empowering” to women. Or those who think that reproductive rights are absolute, without any regard for moral and ethical considerations. Clearly, the extremes aren’t good and as is the case with many movements, people are often presented with a vision that is out of touch and unrepresentative of most feminists.

And, where to begin with the ugly stereotypes of feminists, many of which surely turn off young women? A friend, after attending the Jessica Valenti at IU Monday, stumled upon this link titled “Feminism is Evil” during a regular google search for “feminism.” You know what, though? Some feminists are hairy, some are lesbians, some are fat, some are ugly, some hate men, some don’t wear bras. So what? As Anna would say, hurray for uncompromised and radical feminism! At the same time, no woman wants to be called ugly or fat and these stereotypes, according to Jessica, demonstrate that many still feel threatened by the feminist movement. Why else would they spend so much time trying to discredit it?

Jessica, who is hella cool by the way, also spent some time during her lecture dissecting the purity myth in our society, the topic for her upcoming book. Valenti called for the deconstruction of virginity as a concept, specifically as it relates to women’s sexuality. Indeed, conservatives and anti-feminists have spent so much time obsessing about young women’s sex lives, decrying the rise of “raunch culture” or the “hook up culture.” These exaggerated phenomenon are then used to make judgements about a woman’s character- as Jessica stated, for women, their moral compass lies between their legs. Based on the reaction from the audience, I could tell that this was the most relevant part of Jessica’s speech and I’m not surprised. I only hope that events like these bring out the closet feminists and I know there are a lot out there!

Sorry ladies (and dudes)…many of you are feminists. You just don’t know it yet!

-Indira