Not often, but it happens. Every once in a while I need to dust off all that literary criticism teaching stored in the far corners of my mind and remember that, yes I was on the road to being an academic in her ivory tower.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who was emotionally scarred by The Flaming Lips new video for "Watching the Planets" yesterday. (Don't worry I will not embed it here. My parents read this blog!) It's been getting much buzz for multiple reasons lest of all Wayne Coyne dropping some trou. And you know what, good for him. Be free Wayne. But that's not really my issue with the whole thing.
I found it truly profoundly disturbing and not just because naked bike-riding looks incredibly uncomfortable. What really troubled me was the um... vagina ball. I really don't know how else to describe it. And at first I thought to myself, "Okay. I get what they are trying to do here. They're trying to really highlight how uncomfortable we are about the female anatomy and the birthing process."But the more I thought about it (and I didn't really want to but those images were kind of burned into my brain) the more I became concerned.
If I were still in grad school, I would TOTALLY write a paper about this video and the final paragraph would probably look something like this:
"By downsizing the female to one specific bodily orifice, the video is in turn cutting off any chance for narrative, subjecting the female not only to mutilation but to helplessness and silence. The singer's return to the womb signifies the desire to be completely encapsulated and comforted by the female while remaining in utter control of all objects considered to be within the realm of the feminine."
In other words, stop trying to subconsciously control women Wayne Coyne! GAWD.
(And yes this is SERIOUSLY what I used to do in school.)
Got No Money
2 weeks ago
4 comments:
When they perform now, the beginning of the show has this giant video screen with an animated vagina, and the band enters the stage by walking through that, being "birthed" out on to the stage. It's part of their whole motif now -- the record is called Embryonic, after all.
I don't think it's about confronting people's disgust with birth, just the opposite really -- I think for them, it's a celebration. But I think you're on target about the desire to return to the womb. Maybe that mixed with a desire to be born again.
The lyrics on Embryonic are weird about women -- in several songs, especially "Convinced of the Hex" and "Silver Trembling Hands," a woman is made to be the antagonist.
I saw them do this at ATP right after I watched "Life on Mars" and was like wow. These guys are obsessed. haha. But this is a subconscious reading of the text. It's not about what they meant to do purposefully. When you do a literary critique, the author's intention is not necessarily taken into account because the subconscious desires of culture speak thru them.
also crap Matthew, I sound like a pompous ass. I was a little on my high-horse today. I'm sorry.
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