'Droids and 'Bloids

Don't fight the future

1. Fun activity for a Saturday afternoon! Step 1: Stream "So Sick" from Natasha's Myspace. Step 2: Refresh Youtube until you get the SMACK THE DONALD game/advertisment (pop-up blocker highly recommended). Step 3: SLAP TO THE CLAP! Endless enjoyment

2. Li'l Bobby post on Anne Hathaway is an update of sorts of Barthes's Garbo figure (citing his "The Face of Garbo" essay from Mythologies), and led me to these haphazard points about the android-diva movement, as well as musings on TRULY TERRIBLE Mandy Moore/Diane Keaton flick Because I Said So. And a chance to see if Simon Frith is sticking:

Automaton might see a huge rise in teen comedy/R&B/teenpop/whatever else in ‘07! Coming off the heels of “Me & U,” the android-diva sound is set to demolish the half-assed Beyonce half-android-half-neo-soul thing (which I think is a good thing because the only thing less convincing than neo-soul is HALF neo-soul) — check out Natasha’s ONE NOTE android stylins on this song w/ Clipse, or even Hilary Duff’s (the archetype DISNEY-android, now followed by semi-androids Miley Cyrus and Ashley Tisdale) new, excellent dance-’droid stuff, “With Love” and “Play w/ Fire.”

Anyway, point is I saw Because I Said So, total dreck, but Mandy Moore (great android, not so great singer-songwriter lilty whatever, which is the direction she’s headed on her new album…not that that can’t be a good source of android material, cf. Branch/Carlton confessional, but that Mandy Moore just isn’t that kind of android!) whether consciously or not was going for some of the same appeal I think you’re suggesting of Hathaway. (As pretty strikingly opposed to Keaton, who really gave it her best and “deepest” shot with one of the most braindead scripts I’ve seen in a long time.) But I think Mandy Moore’s mask kinda sucks! She does have a good “aural mask,” the voice as intimation of/”window to” the body. Running with some of Simon Frith’s ideas about voice-as-body here, how the voice “gives the listener access to [the body] without mediation” (and he was working from Barthes, too, in “The Grain of the Voice”).

So the androids offer something like a “grainless” voice (which is how Frith designates the voices of back-up singers) that confound the kind of performer sympathy that pop uniquely offers — that is, on one level, there’s the “back-up singer” reaction, but the spotlight is on the grainlessness, hyper-focused in a close-up (especially in the extremely minimal production contexts of the android-divas like Cassie); and, further, unlike some dance music, there’s not really anywhere else for the spotlight to go (e.g. the producer, as in lots of dance music where the singer is sort of a placeholder, maybe the instrumentalist with a stronger “voice” in rare cases, like Santana featuring who-gives-a-crap syndrome) so we’re forced into the strange position of identification with a highly objectified voice. We admire the formal qualities not so much of the aural lips but the aural lipstick. Something like that.

A little too snarky re: neo-soul/Beyonce (and, if ya hadn't noticed, kind of talking out of my ass, but sometimes you have to power through). Also, I'm being very restrictive in my timeline, since android appeal goes way back (but then I am talking about it as a potential '07 phenom). But I might do a 'droid column. Right now I'm set to write about Tom Breihan's Venn Diagram metaphor from the previous exchange about his HSM post, trying to work through my own place in teenpop's audience. Might be more than I can chew for this month, though, so I'll have DROID DIVA on standby.

3. Bought my first issue of Star -- well, Emily bought it for me -- and was kind of fascinated/horrified reading through it. The REHAB issue (no Amy Winehouse). Mary Kate Olsen looked sick, completely emaciated, and the feature was just about her favorite accessories!!! Paris Hilton is designing clothing/bras (or something), no mention of her racial/homophobic slurs (this must have been more recent), which I want to be very careful not to defend (while dancing with her sister, very drunk, "we're like two n*****s!" and with a gay clubber on the dancefloor, "don't worry, he's a f****t."). Statements like these can be pretty easy conversation shut-downs -- inexcusable, period. But of course it's never as easy as that. It's a testament to Paris Hilton's malleable position as a scorn-magnet (in this case deserved scorn) that the reactions seem to be mostly accompanied by eye-rolls, like "well, she's finally done it." Or even in one kind of surprising case, "so much for trying to enjoy her album." But the harder truth is that I still hear language like this, casually, in similar contexts (probably closer to misguided wannabe-ironic than straightfaced and hateful) and it doesn't send me into shut-down mode -- because it can't. An event like this can't just serve as an excuse to stop thinking about Paris Hilton's (or anyone else's) social role, or what those words mean and how and why people use them, although obviously this sort of outburst can potentially change someone's perceived role (then again, I think that the Paris-hate tends to be so intense that most people won't even bat an eyelash about this incident, and it will be one more equally-weighted point in their litany of reasons why she's awful). For me this opens up more tough questions after a long period of not really thinking about her as much. And now I'm gonna go the bullshit route and not follow this through (yet).

4. Oh yeah, the BLOIDS. Um...well, the experience was kind of awful, honestly. At first I thought poorly of my most recent column, but then I calmed down and reread it, and I think most of my points still stand, except the Ashlee joke, which Emily didn't have the heart to tell me wasn't very funny at the time (it might have been obvious that I fudged an ending, which is a nasty tendency I should really try to kick someday). I would like to clarify that when I say I don't think Lindsay would be "better off" for not thrusting herself more into the public eye, I don't mean that she's better off as a bulimic or alcoholic as opposed to not being one (I hope that's obvious). These are her demons (as they are many people's demons) whether she's in the public eye or not, and coverage of her personal life usually reveals more about those covering it and those they cover it for more than it does about her. And, furthermore, "whom they cover it for" encompasses many more people than the ones making or reading the tabloids. Just about everyone. But I hope to deal with some personal issues these things are bringing up in the column, like the fact that I'm still not understanding my own role in this audience, or this conversation, very well.