Tuesday, April 27, 2010

More on gender dynamics in music

So today I found some more posts about the gender dynamics in music and how many female artists are undervalued. The posts are from the same blog (Tiger Beatdown) as the one that I discussed, but different author (Silvana). In the first one, Silvana discusses what she calls "Dude music": indie/punk/any kind of rock music made by guys and listened to by guys. She talks about how women making the same kind of music are dismissed, how it's ok for men to say that they "just don't like women's voices" or women singers, even though it would be seen as crazy for a woman to say the same thing about men's voices or men singers. Link below.
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/14/ladypalooza-presents-i-went-to-your-concert-and-there-was-nothing-going-on-or-a-meditation-on-dude-music/

The second post, also by Silvana, discusses more generally how privilege functions in rock music in terms of gender, and theorizes on reasons for that. It is also a useful post to check out for an analysis of how privilege can work in other forms of art and other areas of life. In the second post, she links to a bunch of great analyses and expansions by other bloggers of her first post. Not all of which I have read. But check out at least the posts by Amanda and the second post by Spencer, which actually discusses gender privilege, but that's ok.

For a further analysis of gender in music, specifically with regards to the Beatles and Yoko Ono, check out a series of illuminating posts by Cara at The Curvature. Before reading this, I too disliked Ono and thought she was the reason the Beatles broke up and how sad (without really knowing anything about the situation, of course...) The first in the series is http://thecurvature.com/2008/12/15/yoko-ono-a-feminist-analysis-introduction-oh-yoko/

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

"Political" poetry and other art

Many U.S. critics whose work I've read, professors I've had, and people I've known tend to see much "political" art as less valuable than "non-political" art. The idea is that "political" art places the politics first before the art form, which is *bad.* Because then the art itself isn't as good, goes the idea, and "pure" art is better, and political art, especially poetry and fiction (because they are somehow supposed to be simultaneously intimately personal yet universal, a feat for some reason accomplished primarily by white men) is clumsy, stilted. Poetry in particular is supposed to seek higher truth and ignore such worldly concerns. But thinking back to the feminist movement, isn't the personal political? Why not? Isn't *everything* political? If a political piece of art is "bad," why do many insist on seeing the problem as residing mainly with the fact that it's political and not that it's bad? There is plenty of non-political art that is bad, but we don't fault it for not being political.

Once again, I think it's people's refusal to see that, yes, even the work of dominant classes is political. The topic of a poem is always political, even something as personal as the death of a family member. Yet it is seen as ok and good to write about the death of a family from "natural causes," but political to write about the death of someone from non-natural causes. Just as many female poets and/or poets of color in the U.S. have been given the label of "special interest/(too) personal," or "(too) political," many Latin American poets have been stuck with the "political" label and I have read multiple commentaries about how the problem with Latin American poetry is how political it is. ... Yet when Pablo Picassso paints a scene of Guernica, that is ok. That is "good" art. Dylan Thomas' poem to his dying father ("Do not go gently...") is both personal yet universal, and certainly not political. Nevermind that not all poetic traditions have even focused on aesthetics "above" message.

Anyway, I have read a fair bit of Latin American poetry that was political but also beautiful. With all the colonization, imperialism, and foreign involvement in Latin American affairs, many more things are overtly political. For example, living in Chile during their September 11, when military leader Augusto Pinochet led a U.S.-backed coup against the democratically-elected Salvador Allende, was terribly political. In a country with a population of roughly 10-11 million, several thousand people were directly killed or "disappeared" by Pinochet's government, tens of thousands were tortured or interned in camps, and several hundred thousand fled the country. Even if you consider only these people, that's a lot of affected people. Start considering their friends and family, and that's a significant percentage of the total population. Also consider that *all* Chileans were affected by the change in government, the new policies put in place, and everything else. Yet writing about these changes is purely "political" and not universal or even personal?? I don't think political poetry or other art should have an additional burden to climb in order to be considered "good art."

Rant done. Check out one of my other blogs, which I have been neglecting even more than this one, for a bunch of poetry and quotes that I like from novels. I have a fair bit of poetry in Spanish--with English translations, of course--and I'm about to post some great stuff by Mario Benedetti of Chile! It's a livejournal located at funsizedwit.livejournal.com

Female musicians and artists

It has come to my attention recently that I and many of my friends tend to like more musicians/musical groups dominated by men than women. While this tends to be somewhat true regardless of gender identity, it is more extreme for my male friends. For many of them, liking a female musical group is the exception, and many of the female musicians my female-identified friends and I enjoy are seen as "female" musicians--that is, music by women for women only. This bothers me even though I know that I am guilty of it too, and I have come up with some ideas for why this is. Fortuitously, several weeks after I had been thinking of this, I came across a blog post at Tiger Beatdown discussing this idea.

In this post, K. discusses the exact same issues and makes many good points. Like how when men write about "personal" things like sex, it's seen as "universal" and applies to all MANkind (meaning all humans, of course). When women do the same thing, it's seen as "personal." She discusses this by comparing Liz Phair's work and the critical/popular response to it with Weezer's work (fronted by Rivers Cuomo) and the critical/popular response to it. I must admit I'm not very familiar with Phair's work, but that is going to change as of now. K makes a lot of great points about how Cuomo's lyrics are far more based on intimate, personal experiences of his, yet they are often seen to transcend him, whereas Phair's work is much more varied and even includes songs that are explicitly *not* about her or her experiences, yet her work is typically characterized as being much more intimate and personal.

I think we see this everywhere in music. A lot of people say that they don't like a lot of the female artists out there. Well, many of the female artists who achieve critical and/or commercial success do it by conforming to certain guidelines, which is probably one reason why we have so many female pop artists singing mediocre songs about love and boys, yet so few female artists represented in other genres. Additionally, even when male artists sing songs about love and girls, their work is generally perceived differently (and is frequently seen as better). Many female artists who write songs about other topics are seen sacrificing art for political means. Etc etc.

Moreover, I think this happens in just about every genre. Fiction, short story, poetry, visual art, theater, performance art... Male-centered experiences, perspectives, and stories are seen as universal and apply to all, but female- or trans-centered experiences are seen as "special interest," "personal," and so on. Which is probably why women tend to be more interested in and willing to read stories with male protagonists than men are interested in and willing to read stories with female protagonists--at least in my experience (of course, trans and genderqueer folk don't have much opportunity to read and listen to anything that centers their experiences, and much of the little that has been published has been written by cis-gendered folk). All of this is confirmed by a reading of the classics, most literature classes, thinking about the "great" American rock bands and artists, past and present, etc. This also goes for race, class, and a variety of other categories: the dominant classes' experiences are universalized, and everyone else's are trivialized. I will write more about this in relation to "political" poetry and art in my next post, but there is so much more to say. For now, check out the blog post at Tiger Beatdown below.

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/15/ladypalooza-presents-why-cant-i-be-making-love-cause-im-in-it-or-the-phaircuomo-conundrum/#more-1085