I figure I might as well, uh, (more) publicly bring up the first part(?) of William Bowers's Hannah Montana piece for Pitchfork. I bring it up because I'm seemingly one of a pretty small handful of critics who actually does engage with HM on a fairly regular basis (and I enjoy a lot of her stuff), and having seen the movie now...I'm not getting this as an argument, or as a joke, or as a semi-fiction.
My first instinct was that the piece was just fabricated -- fair 'nuff, I'm not going to go around decrying good-enough doc/fiction pieces that got the facts wrong so that some writer can get ethically ad hoc'd into oblivion for a gag that went awry. But that's not really true -- too many specifics that you'd need to see in the film (the obtrusive camera equipment in the 3-D, though for me the best part was the DRUM STICK TOSS UP WOOOOO!). Actually I thought the 3-D was pretty amazing, leaps and bounds beyond...what, Muppets 3-D over at Disney World (witnessed once at age seven)? Captain EO? (Same.) When we first see Miley on stage, the 3-D helps give her this commanding presence that she sustains pretty easily for the rest of the film. The girl is an amazing performer, and I say this as someone who's been watching her staged clips from day one and didn't really buy her as a performer at all until...well, I guess until I heard a few of her new songs and heard some real personality there. But definitely after tonight -- there's one point where she goes up her little platform, to the edge of a sea of children, and says "I want to know who's the BIGGEST Hannah Montana fan out there in the audience tonight," and afterwards you're kind of amazed she delievered it without some Samuel L. Jackson motherfucking qualifier. I mean she's FIERCE.
So anyway. Second instinct says that SOME is fabricated, like the date. Beyond the general premise, I find it hard to believe that this revelation of hers ("Children! Africa!") happened during the second song in the movie. (Hey stop making fun of me for not getting jokes, lemme get to my point here, which is that the jokes aren't funny, and they don't make a lot of sense.)
Third instinct says...I don't have a clue what's going on in this piece. I'd say it's received contempt for the audience, but it covers its bases about that, at length, before proceeding to basically do the same dance with more self-knowing (possibly fictional) rhetorical flourishes -- and I basically misread the damn thing the first time around in thinking he should have talked to an audience member (as I can attest, if you pick the right/wrong show, there will be NO ONE in the audience. Except two people, which did keep me from getting up and running through the aisles like a four year old). He's talking about the film audience.
Well, same difference, same idea. I just don't want to lose points for poor reading comprehension (I'm willing to lose points for being a stick in the mud JUST LEMME FINISH ALRIGHT??). I mean...what's the argument here? That sometimes you just don't like corporate schlock no matter the length lone loonies in the critical community are willing to go to seem contrarian? This kind of misses out on the fairly ambivalent relationship most critics who take Hannah Montana seriously have to her music. That kids are being duped? This kind of misses out on the many good songs that are in this movie. (Like, seriously? There was no differentiation of production, style, guitar tone across like twelve songs?)
The self-deprecation stuff plays as prep caveat for the reiteration of something that's fairly common -- this is a "them" thing, and I'm not down with it. But why write about this if, of all the points one might be engaging, getting to know "them" is basically the ONE point that's being danced around or flat-out avoided at all costs? Especially if by doing this dance you're basically goofing around for laffs? So many assumptions have to get a free pass (evil business practices at the distribution and marketing level not being particularly bankrupt assumptions, but then these are points that get swallowed in the smug/sour tone of the rest of the piece) that I'm just left a little puzzled. Frankly I want him to stop bullshitting me (me being someone who DID see this film because he wanted to, and really enjoyed it) and make an argument I can use. Which you say would mean it's not funny. To which I'd say, well, if yer premise is wrong, your punchline probably isn't going to work either.
Oh shit, right, the movie. Miley OWNS this movie. I've never gotten a sense of her as this kind of performer from the live stuff she's done, from her television show, from about 50% of her songs, even. She sold everything, even the songs that, uh, suck. (Although there were only one or two bad songs, terrible Jonas Bros. ballad doesn't count, and a few I haven't liked so much sounded better live, "G.N.O." and "Nobody's Perfect" that I remember.)
Almost all were picks for my Mostly Wanted comp from last year (except the aforementioned two improved live numbers, plus the acoustic ballad "I Miss You" that she performed back in the first season -- which was a lot better in its...what, thirty-second form? Without winks and Jumbotron candid pics of grandpa, RIP -- yikes, tacky!).
And, uh...to be honest, the production wasn't that tacky. It was understated compared to the spectacle I was expecting. The 3-D was used fairly tactically to isolate Miley up front and give some space to the instruments, but only a few gimmicky shots of drumsticks and confetti etc. One great moment where she points the mic at the audience, i.e. the camera, and there it is, right in front of you. SING ALONG. STAND UP. I DON'T WANT TO SEE A SINGLE PERSON SITTING DOWN. I mean, she just kicks ass in this movie. (Holy shit, I'm like the Harry Knowles of tween concert flixx.)
Yeah, there was fake-Hannah and T-shirt coordination, but for the most part its like a four-piece band plus Miley plus two back-up singers. I mean hell, there were more people onstage in Stop Making Sense.
I guess what I'm saying here is that this movie is good. Like, "good" good. Like, "like" like. Like like like. I liked it! A lot! It's a great intro to the phenomenon, good-enough intro to the music, excellent use of 3-D, pretty damn savvy concert movie -- great use of extras footage in particular, would have actually liked ANOTHER backstage segment with Miley just shooting the shit at the expense of one of the heinous numbers, like "Let's Dance." She's going to be a pro for a long time, even if she loses Disney and works her way into Shelved Territory over the course of a few years. And I don't see her ever going into total self-destruct mode -- I think that an interesting paradox of the tighter image control Disney has over its stars is that they can be seen as rebellious without literally endangering themselves. Nudie pic for boyfriend = SCANDAL? Damn, some people need to SMOKE CRACK to get in the papers these days.
I'm picking on WB as a framework for these musings here not because it's easy to uh nit-pick (e.g. $15 is hardly "double" the normal price of a movie ticket, unless you're seeing a student discount or the last matinee show or something; when the band "Skynrded out," they were playing a refrain from a song they'd already performed, and weren't improvising or soloing over it, so I don't see how it might have been different than what they were playing the first time around, or throughout the film vamping on a given song (like "Start All Over" or "See You Again," both with extended intros"; and Hannah's "two albums" in the Billboard top ten include a Disney chaff tossed-off remix money-maker called "Hannah Montana Non-Stop Dance Party," which like most of these kinds of efforts made a splash in its first week on impulse buys and then fell down the charts -- it's like determining the "significance" of HSM tracks showing up in the Billboard top ten in week one but failing to notice that they promptly fell down and off the charts because they were basically a downloading fluke; the story wasn't in the "singles"). Uh, yeah, so I'm not NIT-PICKING (anymore) but pointing out that to even have the urge to do a "project" like this, fictional as it wants to be, it helps to understand what you're doing with it first, or you'll end up with a compromised or weak conclusion almost by default.
Sort of connects to Carl Wilson's Celine project (a little, tho I hesitate to make this connection too many times since I already brought it up once ina clearer context: note, read Tom's comment in the comments section) in that for any information I get (and in all fairness there's not a lot of information to be gleaned from the column, but apples and oranges versus apples and...y'know, penguins, maybe) I nod for a second, then furrow my brow, then think "well maybe what I see as poor reasoning is really just a stage of social engagement, or fear of it, seen as something to 'get past'" and then thinking...wait, why couldn't y'all get past these stages before you sat down to write this thing? And meanwhile I have NO ISSUES WHATSOEVER, I'm TOTALLY CURED. Trust me on that! (Why aren't you trusting me on that?)
These kids aren't cattle, and the music they're listening to isn't as bankrupt as their parent company's corporate practices. It's good music. Well, it's uneven music, never said otherwise. It has problems. But at least one song ("C U AGENN") is the second-best song from last year according to no fewer than...y'know, three-ish people, and about ten more I'd consider sticking on a mix for someone. I just don't understand why we have to waste any time even considering all this doomsday "where do I draw the LINE, maaaaan" bullshit, when I don't see any argument that could be made to support the basic premise here -- even a clever one, or a sorta resonant one. "Hey, I hate this and I hate how the marketing and distribution and corporate whatever ugliness works...I mean, why shouldn't I just congeal 'em into one ugly mass entity, and let their audience get sucked into a black hole with the whole shebang even as I pretend like I'm 'struggling' with such a concept?"
I'm not even totally being sarcastic there, because there are lots of similarly (contemptuously) motivated impulses in, uhhhh ME, because I often reaaaally want to keep my contempt intact. And in most cases I plan to keep it intact. Because I think contempt is often a merited reaction, and it can be used really effectively when directed at the right targets in the right ways, in the right situations. It might be (might be) the most effective form of rock criticism, in the sense that I tend to respond to rockcrit ideas born of contempt, or joy-from-contempt ("fuck all that jazz THIS IS WHERE IT'S AT!"), more viscerally than ideas sparked from compromise and/or understanding and/or some vision of a democratic form of listening or "fair" criticism. (I didn't say I wanted FAIR I said I wanted GOOD. And because you're being unfair in this case, and your unfairness is easier and wronger than my fairness, your criticism is NO GOOD.) (Not to say I write very well in this mode myself, as that last parenthetical would be implying if I hadn't gone off the rails at least fifteen minutes ago, but I do like to think that when I'm not missing the point completely I can draw blood. That is, I see myself as having fairly powerful jabs that make precise wounds, but usually in every place directly around THE POINT. A neat little circle, and you might be able to intuit that point, or nudge me toward it, but it's hard to just NAIL it, maybe my depth perception is off. Whatever it is, it's my problem.) But these sortsa "I really want to get this but I'm sorry it's just not my thing" (at most "fair," and usually best) tend to shove all that wrong contempt in all the wrong places, and this piece isn't an exception. But I do get a sense of struggle in it, and a sense of humor, and real ideas getting buried in a fuzzy structural concept, that most writers don't have. I just don't get a point, I don't get something I can really respond to, despite the fact that I've now spent several thousand words not-responding. I get lots of decisive stabbing motions that are hitting some target out there that I just totally fail to recognize. Well, I recognize it, don't need to be totally dishonest here, but it doesn't interest me. What you call a target I call a coffee stain that everyone is convinced is a target [PLEASE GOD STOP THE METAPHOR BEFORE SOMEONE GETS HURT] I just wish people would give that target a rest and...y'know, look like THREE inches to the left and see if there's something over there worth targeting.
[EDIT: If you're having trouble sloggin' through all that VENT, just check out Ross's shorter -- and uh eerily similarly worded! Coincidence, f'real!!! -- review of Miley Movie in the second half of this post.]
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