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Arts
Tuesday, February 2, 2016 — 5
GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN
Missteps and missed
flu shots
I
didn’t get a flu shot this year
for the first time in my life.
(Really taking adulthood by
storm, evidently.) So, of course,
this was the first year ever I
caught the
flu. Over the
course of a
week spent
in bed, I fin-
ished binge-
watching
the entirety
of “Game of
Thrones,”
HBO’s hall-
mark fantasy
political/
sexual drama.
I now bring up “Thrones”
in every conversation I can. I
read episode recaps and dive
dangerously deep into online
fan theories. I’m obsessed,
obsessed with a show that is
notorious for its wishy-washy
treatment of women. Laden in
turn with complex and pow-
erful female characters and
laughably gratuitous female
nudity, “Thrones” isn’t win-
ning feminist awards anytime
soon. I still love it, but like
many things in this world, I
feel obligated to continuously
address its latent sexism.
At the end of my week of
influenza, my friends and I
went to see “Sisters,” Tina Fey
and Amy Poehler’s newest film
about adult sisters returning
home for one last rager in their
parents’ house. I felt a similar
discomfort to when I watched
“Thrones,” but for a different
reason. The film is resolutely
feminist, passing the Bechdel
test with aplomb and inserting
sly jokes about male privilege.
But it also features a plot line
about a Korean character who
fits just about every Asian
stereotype there is. Hae-Won
(Greta Lee, “St. Vincent”)
and her friends work at a nail
salon. She is casually promis-
cuous, a plaything for white
men and she speaks heavily
accented English, a fact from
which an extended joke is
drawn. It was one of the most
demeaning portrayals of East
Asian women I’d seen in a long
time. Just as I was constantly
making both excuses for and
criticisms of “Thrones,” I felt
I needed to do the same for
“Sisters,” a movie starring two
feminists and written by one. A
work can’t be feminist if it cre-
ates isolating and tokenizing
images of people of color — by
definition, that’s just not what
feminism is.
Take another Fey creation:
the Netflix comedy “Unbreak-
able Kimmy Schmidt.” The
show, which was released to
universal acclaim last March,
follows Kimmy (Ellie Kemper,
“The Office”), a survivor of
abuse and terror, as she moves
to New York and starts a new
life. Kimmy is a uniquely femi-
nist character: naïve but buoy-
ant, hard-working and honest.
And despite the laugh-out-loud
humor of the show, Fey does
not represent Kimmy’s situa-
tion lightly, earnestly express-
ing her PTSD and struggles
acclimating to society.
But there is a catch. In the
sixth episode, we are intro-
duced to Dong (Ki Hong Lee,
“The Maze Runner”), a Viet-
namese delivery boy who is
ultimately Kimmy’s love inter-
est. While an intensely lovable
character, Dong is painted
with many of the same limiting
stereotypes as Hae-Won; for
me, it’s the one sour note of the
series.
“Tina!” I groaned to myself.
The woman who wrote hon-
estly and poignantly about
her youthful insecurities in
her memoir “Bossypants,”
the woman who gave us Liz
Lemon, who said in “30 Rock”
that being a woman is the
worst “because of society!” It
hurt me to see a woman who I
consider a personal and profes-
sional icon missing the mark by
so much.
These representations har-
ken back to first- and second-
wave feminism, when the
voices of women of color were
ignored or even squashed in
favor of the white constituen-
cy’s goals. That shit shouldn’t
cut it anymore. All too often
modern feminists are forget-
ting that feminism as a system
is inclusionary. Amy Schumer
did it in her stand up with cal-
lous jokes about Latinos. While
she has since apologized,
her original biases speak to a
greater issue — feminism is not
feminism when it continuously
limits divergent identities
and experiences. And frankly,
works of art that ignore inclu-
sivity just aren’t as good.
I don’t follow sports; recent-
ly I was looking through my
old Facebook statuses, and one
from the 10th grade proudly
attested that I was boycotting
the Super Bowl. So while I
can’t tell you which teams are
playing in the Super Bowl this
year, I can tell you that Cold-
play is performing the halftime
show, featuring the Queen her-
self, Beyoncé. Last week, the
two released the video for their
recent collaboration, “Hymn
for the Weekend.”
The song fucking rocks,
groovy yet soaring in all the
right places. On the other
hand, the video, which features
Chris Martin and Yoncé don-
ning traditional Hindi garb
and dancing in front of groups
of Indian children celebrat-
ing Holi, the Hindu festival of
color, is a travesty and a mis-
step. It’s cultural appropriation
in the most basic of terms, sim-
plifying complex cultures and
people into pretty background
props, expressing abject pover-
ty with no context or recourse.
It’s bad. And it comes from
Beyoncé, a publicly proud femi-
nist who has spoken out about
recognizing women of color in
the feminist community.
How does this still happen?
How can women who speak
with such depth and resonance
about navigating a patriarchal
world be so tone-deaf about
other cultures? Their femi-
nism, and their art, is so much
better without these stereo-
types and appropriations. I
want these women I love to be
better, because with every lim-
iting comment or joke, they not
only hurt the community they
are addressing — they hurt
feminism as a whole. Feminism
loses credibility in the minds
of those prone to knocking
it down and weakening the
system by isolating female
voices that should be included.
I won’t stop loving Tina and
Amy and Bey, but criticizing
their feminism is another step
to making feminism better.
Just like “Game of Thrones”
would be so much better with
a few less naked women and a
few more naked men.
Gadbois encourages you all to
vaccinate your children with femi-
nist theory. To innoculate yourself,
e-mail gadbnat@umich.edu.
NATALIE
GADBOIS
Lawrence wants to
make pop cool again
By MIMI ZAK
Daily Arts Writer
Pop music gets a pretty bad
rep, but the genre still serves its
original intention: it’s an amal-
gamation of various kinds of
sounds that acts as the mono-
culture from which our national
(and international) music com-
munity ebbs and flows. Pop
music was once used to mark the
best original music of the time.
The Beatles, Michael Jackson,
Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and The
Beach Boys were once defined
by the now doubtful musical dis-
tinction. Where did the change
occur? What dragged pop music
from something that was both
organic and relatable to some-
thing highly manufactured and
irrelevant to anything outside the
allegorical club?
The descent of pop music could
be traced back, as so many things
can, to the rise of technologies
and the Internet. Music stream-
ing sites created an inundation of
artists, with most searching for
fame at any cost. Artistic value
and organic material fell behind
the stronger industry algorithms
for cookie-cutter pop music.
Lyrical depth and sonic origi-
nality became harder to find. At
the end of the 20th century and
at the turn of the 21st, things of
the musical sort were excessively
dubious. The music of those 15
years matched the economic and
political stagnation of the times.
Nothing dared to be too original.
No one wanted to cross genres.
The times were too hard for that.
But, in looking at the Top 40 of
the past six years, the fight for dif-
ference appears to have returned.
That strangeness that once pos-
sessed our former kings and
queens of pop, like Michael Jack-
son and Madonna, have started
to re-enter the airwaves. Most
recently, Drake’s “Hotline Bling”
was a Billboard hit with emo-
tional depth and sonic variety.
Omi’s “Cheerleader” had a horn
section playing from the speakers
of the backyard frat party down
the street. “i” by Kendrick Lamar
reintroduced the Isley Brothers
to the Top 40 listeners who were
formerly unaware of their pop
music importance. Genres and
specific stylings have started to
blur. And among these new mix-
tures of soul with jazz or pop
or rap, the constant has started
to edge further away from the
unfeeling party hits of yester-
days. However slowly, and how-
ever gradually, a new era of bands
like Lawrence, an edgy pop duo,
are fighting for the resurgence of
good pop music.
“We love the idea of pop
music,” said Clyde Lawrence, one
of the two Lawrence siblings at
the forefront of the band. “The
accessibility of it, the ‘hookiness’
of it, the catchiness of it all, the
ability to hear something once
and totally be into it; those are
all a lot of things that I love. I just
don’t happen to currently like a
lot of the pop music. I would love
to call our music ‘pop music.’ In
fact, I think that our music sounds
like what I wish pop music would
sound like.”
Gracie Lawrence, the female
powerhouse of the band, just
graduated from high school. She’s
putting off her recent acceptance
to Brown University to go on tour
with the rest of the band. Clyde
Lawrence just graduated from
Brown University with most of the
other band members. Having used
college as a place to collect musi-
cians and create music with them,
Clyde never molded his time for
the sole purpose of academics.
“For me, college was ... well, I
looked at it as a musical oppor-
tunity in a lot of ways,” Clyde
said. “I don’t mean to belittle the
educational opportunities that
I received at school. Brown’s a
really great academic school, but
I went to school with the pure
intention of trying to put together
a band.”
So Clyde and Gracie Lawrence
and their band of college musi-
cians played gigs in and around
the Brown University communi-
ty. At dance halls, public parties
and small gigs up and down the
East Coast, the band used their
soul-based pop sound and long
list of cover songs to attract a
groovy college crowd.
“I had always heard that col-
lege is a great place to kind of get
a start and get a bunch of a shows
under your belt,” Clyde said. “If
you talked to anyone who knew
me at Brown, they would tell you
that that was definitely my big-
gest priority over homework. So
for me, it wasn’t either college or
music; it was ‘how do we make
this music experience count?’ ”
The band’s upcoming album
release has been a long time
coming for many of the band’s
followers. After Clyde’s solo EP
release in 2013, Homesick, the
band has been taking its time in
creating an album they believe
will best match the sound they
hope to emulate. Under the
direction of Soulive member
Eric Krasno, the famed producer
has helped Lawrence with con-
necting their upcoming album
release to artists with a similar
mission and sound.
Krasno’s network and his con-
nection to the Brooklyn blues,
soul and funk world, aided the
Lawrence clan in collecting musi-
cal bedfellows of similar sound
and transcending taste.
“We were joking that we
should really hit up Cory Henry,
the organist from Snarky Puppy
and get him on our album,” Gra-
cie said. “And we made that joke
in front of Kras and he respond-
ed with, ‘Should I call in Henry,
do you guys want Cory Henry?’
Same with the drummer from
Lettuce, Adam Deitch, Krasno set
us up with him to collaborate on
our album.”
What about Lawrence, though,
is so unique? What places them
above or among the soul/pop
sounds of today? All these ques-
tions are answerable: Lawrence
automatically finds originality
in the placement and following
of their music. The band is cat-
egorized by fans as a modern act
whose sound and message are
linked. Lawrence is like Leon
Bridges, Vulfpeck, Lake Street
Dive, Donnie Trumpet & the
Social Experiment, White Denim
and many others because of the
visceral, emotional, almost tan-
gible reaction that naturally
flows from the soulful character
of their sound. Forget the con-
veyor belts of music production
where people create the music
they think will sell. Lawrence
has placed themselves among a
selection of modern artists whose
music is eternal because they mix
catchiness with genuine feeling.
They are bound together, across
a variety of genres, as those who
want their audience to connect as
much as they want them to dance
and awkwardly sway.
“The whole concept behind the
album is that we want it all to feel
as though it can coexist with the
old and the new,” Clyde said. “You
should be able to put on one of our
songs at a party right after play-
ing a Stevie Wonder song and it
should be able to continue what-
ever vibe or feeling the audience
was just feeling. Then that song
could be followed by a Beyoncé or
Bruno Mars track.”
With Paul Simon’s Graceland
and Carole King’s Tapestry or
anything by Stevie Wonder in
mind, the band Lawrence placed
an intense amount of focus on
creating a cohesive album with
an overarching emotional arch.
“We are less jammy and less
improvisionational than other
bands in the soul and funk world
because we are so focused on
creating the song,” Gracie said.
“We’re too focused on the emo-
tion and structure of the song,
and then the album as a whole, to
allow for too much jam band-like
action.”
The art of the cohesive, all-
feeling album isn’t lost with
bands like Lawrence. Time and
specific detail was placed on the
ebb and flow of each song in the
context of the larger album. Emu-
lating the vision of artists they
adore and appreciate, Lawrence
has created an album that tells
a story, or includes some sort of
journey, instead of just a collec-
tion of separate pop singles.
“The
vibes
of
each
and
every song are distinct,” Gracie
recounted. “And I don’t know if
people still listen to full albums,
but hopefully they will because
that’s how we wrote our album.
We placed intense detail on the
emotional journey of the album.
We want it to be exciting for the
album to tell its own story, and for
every song to share its own kind
of sound.”
Lawrence, with the help of
Eric Krasno, are working against
the torrential wave of cookie-cut-
ter pop music that tends to over-
take the music industry. Because
it’s a band like Lawrence with
whom the masses can connect.
It is bands like Lawrence who
could and should be well-known,
but they’re not. And many can’t
understand why. I don’t neces-
sarily understand why they aren’t
more popular. There is a magnetic
and powerful kind of sound that
emanates from anything mix-
ing the genres of soul and pop.
Lawrence is one of those bands
that deliver something magnetic,
who feel like a well-kept secret.
They’re holding something that
more should know about, but
they have to look a little harder to
find. They’re just waiting for the
rest of the world to catch up.
Lawrence’s new album will be
arriving sometime in the coming
month. This coming Monday, Feb-
ruary 8, Lawrence is performing at
the Crofoot in Pontiac, Michigan.
Tickets are $10, and doors open at
7 P.M.
MUSIC INTERVIEW
rousing,
pleading
“Lover
Come Back” that gave the
audience just what they were in
the mood for: something to sing
along to, something to make
them smile in spite of sadness
and something that allowed
them to find commonalities
between Green’s story and their
own.
The variety of styles presented
at the festival were embodied
best by two acts in particular
that have lasted throughout
the growth and development of
the folk genre, growing with it
and constantly contributing to
it. Music veterans Yo La Tengo
and Richard Thompson, with
musical releases dating back
to 1996 and 1974 respectively,
were brilliantly distinct and
representative of tried and true
music. Singer Georgia Hubley
of Yo La Tengo has an almost
meditative quality to her voice
that makes it simultaneously
relaxing and attention-grabbing.
With four other instrumentalists
complementing
her
sound,
the full effect of the band’s
simplistic style was a joy to
experience visually and audibly.
Thompson was like the cool
fun uncle of the night, telling
jokes
between
songs
and
getting everyone to participate
by teaching them some lyrics.
Rolling Stone has called him one
of the best guitarists of all time,
and if you’re inclined to compare
his fame with that of the younger
generation, it’s interesting to
note that his most recent album,
Still, reached number six on UK
charts.
Earlier in the evening, the
rocking Ben Daniels Band —
who just released a new EP on
iTunes — opened the show,
followed by the angelic voices
of Andy Baxter and Kyle Jahnke
of Penny and Sparrow. Nora
Jane Struthers & The Party
Line
contributed
bluegrass
vibes, and The Oh Hellos
brought nine people on stage
to create the biggest sounds of
the evening. Originally a sibling
duo, Maggie and Tyler Heath
have certainly grown beyond
bedroom recordings, releasing
two full albums and an EP
since 2011. Their appearance at
the festival is just one stop on
their current North American
tour that will include sets at
the Okeechobee Music & Arts
Festival and Bonnaroo.
FOLK FEST
From Page 1
‘Thrones’ isn’t
winning any
feminist awards,
but I love it.
A work can’t
be feminist if it
tokenizes POC.
WANNA GET CLOBBERED BY
CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM?
E-mail ajtheis@umich.edu and katjacqu@umich.edu for
information on applying to Daily Arts.
Thompson was
like the cool
uncle of the
night.