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Friday, September 08, 2006

Rock on

Three snapshots of the week:

*Various folks in my office are once again teasing the only man who works with us full-time. Why are they doing this? Because some of them are taking the mandated state-supported sexual harassment training. They seem to have taken the opportunity to learn to harass. Not how to not harass.

*I’m standing in our main office for the college. I am once again struck by how many women there are in positions of power within the college.

*Honey and I are watching one of our reality shows. In this case Rock Star: Supernova. The two remaining women are the bottom two. The most middle-of-the-road guys (to quote Honey) are the top two.

It’s easy enough to be a left-coast progressive person and forget that I still live in a world informed by attitudes that are not in sync with my own. I’m not talking here about the idiocy of the current administration or scary fundamentalist religious people. Those are an admitted danger.

Storm Large

Isn’t that a great name? And she says it’s her actual given name. I don’t care if it is or not.

Storm Large

She’s the woman who got kicked off Rock Star. I’m fairly certain that she’s better off. However talented the individual musicians in Supernova are, the original songs they’ve debuted don’t do much for me. None of the guys in the band (Tommy Lee, Gilby Clarke, and Jason Newsted) were the primary songwriters for the bands they were in before (Motley Crue, Guns n’ Roses, and Metallica). It could well be a successful band, but I don’t think it will transcend. And the truth is, that I’m not enough of a fan to want to listen to a rock band that tends to metal unless they transcend.

There’s a justice angle to the whole thing, though. When Storm performs terrifically well, week after week she shouldn’t get kicked off. The original songs that each of the top five performed ranged from the weak to the terrific. Storm’s was terrific. It was called Ladylike. Go watch it on Youtube. I’ll wait.

Welcome back.

Ok, so I hope you agree. She’s good. The song is smart. She’s an accomplished performer. Her voice is interesting and has a great tone.

So, what’s the problem? The problem, it seems to me, is that she’s a woman trying to win a competition that everyone (including the public and the members of the band) is/are expecting a man to win. Why? There are women singers, of course. And there are women rock stars. But there aren’t many of the latter. Name some. Go ahead.
Who did you come up with?

Janis Joplin?
Ann and Nancy Wilson?
Sheryl Crow?
Melissa Etheridge?
Joan Jett?
Pat Benatar?
The woman from Evanescence?

There are others to be sure, but there have been a number of years that the Grammies were unable to give the “Best Female Rock Vocal Performance” award because of a dearth of entries (1988, 1992, 1994, 2005, 2006 are the years it has not been given since 1980). Right. There weren’t enough women who sang rock to give the Grammy out. Doesn’t happen in Polka. That Jimmy Sturr dude has won 15, most recently this year for “Shake, Rattle, and Polka!”

Why don’t women succeed in rock, except in rare circumstances? Why were Storm and Dillana, clearly (to me at least) more talented than Lukas Rossi, who is a total poseur in my eyes, the bottom two?

There are certainly competitions that women can and do win. Reality teevee or no. Rock Star has become a phenomenon. It’s wildly popular and the publicity the Supernova is getting from the competition is phenomenal. And I know I could just shut up and watch.

But when I tell myself that it’s just teevee, that it doesn’t matter, that I get too wrapped up in analyzing my world, I think about how much of how we decide to view the world is a function of what we see on the media.

Does it matter when Tara gets shot on Buffy right after having lesbian sex? Yes. Why? Because the message (whether intentional or not) is that lesbian sex gets punished. Often by death.

Does it matter that Storm is really good and gets kicked off Rock Star? Yes. Why? Because the message (whether intentional or not) is that the best woman (maybe the second best, but I go back and forth) is worse than and less suited to fronting a rock band than the three men with whom she’s competing.

Storm, to her credit, was gracious. And Dave Navarro seemed genuinely upset. He offered to play guitar for her on her first song. Not a bad offer, really. Storm will be fine. And, so will I, of course.

But it all got me thinking. It may have simply been to long since I’ve taught a gender class. So I don’t have an outlet for these kinds of things. Or it could be that I watch too much teevee for my own good.

Either way, I don’t like it. It’s all well and good for me to be happy in an environment where women are in charge and aren’t all the same. If I peek around, though, I remember that we’ve not come near as far as we could or should.

Still, here’s a promise. I’ll buy Storm’s album. Can’t say the same thing about Supernova. Not that the middle-aged white over-educated lesbian demographic is what they’re going after. Still, I do have money. And I know how to use it. In America, that’s saying something.

6 comments:

WenWhit said...

I don't like it much, either... when I think of it. Often it seems my awareness is akin to the ostrich with her head buried in the sand.

The video of Storm Large was entertaining. Her name, though, made me think of this.

Gotta love my girlfriend. :)

Slangred said...

I was really upset when they dumped Storm. I couldn't believe they did it. Lukas is a poseur and his "Head Spin" original was just noise and more posing. He also chose to encore that instead of doing a new cover to save his ass/stretch his style, which pissed me off further.

Storm was my favorite. She has a cool voice and a very cool, secure, sexy vibe that I really, really like. I liked the "feeling" of her original, although I thought some of the lyric was a bit awkward. She rocked it, though. She absolutely rocked it, and she managed to be very sportsmanlike throughout the competition, something else I really dug about her. Grrrrrrr.

Suzanne said...

Aside from the point of your post, which is well-stated btw, I was slightly disturbed by the video of Storm's performance.

Did anyone else notice her breasts do not move at all? The rest of her dances, shakes, shimmies, moves about freely while her breasts don't show even the slightest quiver.

My shallow self felt cheated by the lack of breast motion. Perhaps the voters did also.

Teresa said...

Storm rocks. Especially after she told viewers they could see her nekkid on her Web site and thereby exceeded her own bandwidth—Sporks has since checked out the site, you know, purely for academic reasons, and reports no actual naked pics.

I get nervous whenever gender becomes too much of a focal point in a reality show, like when Survivor pits men against women and such. I want the women to "represent," and I become a little more invested than I'd like in how they do. Often the cards seem so stacked against them, and in my mind the shows come to represent little microcosms of the world. Whether it's the tribe or "America" who votes, women lose far more than 50% of the time, and it depresses me.

sporksforall said...

I didn't promise jiggling boobs.

Anonymous said...

Hey - what happened to Patrice Pike? I have not been watching this show or any TV at all, since we don't have a living room or cable yet. She's an Arts Magnet alum. Was she good?