6A — Monday, April 3, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
DAILY MUSIC COLUMN
The reason ‘emo’ just isn’t
as sad as everyone thinks
Every genre of music inevitably
gets reduced to a stereotype in
the eyes of the public. Hip hop is
often cast as bluntly misogynistic
party music. Jazz is thought
to be impenetrable, highbrow
virtuosity. The two words “heavy
metal” immediately call to mind
dudes with long beards, tattoos
and leather jackets.
And for “emo” rock — a label
now so derided that many bands
who come close to the phrase will
immediately disavow it — most
people will picture immensely
sad teenagers, the drama of their
privileged lives so overwhelming
that they can only find solace
in overly emotional, directly
relatable guitar music. You’ll
hear the adjective “whiny” to
describe every vocalist. The word
“wristcutter” might be thrown
around.
It’s
an
unpleasant,
derisive view of a subculture,
and it’s no surprise that no band
wants to be associated with it.
For
this
image,
I
blame
Rivers Cuomo and Weezer. Of
course, they didn’t invent emo
(that dubious honor often gets
awarded to ’80s D.C. hardcore
band
Rites
of
Spring),
but
Weezer parlayed its early success
into
1996’s
Pinkerton.
Their
sophomore record was a vast
departure from the often kid-
friendly, goofy image of The Blue
Album, which propelled the band
into stardom with hit singles like
“Buddy Holly,” “My Name Is
Jonas” and “The Sweater Song.”
Instead, Pinkerton followed in
the footsteps of the first album’s
“Say It Ain’t So,” a beautiful,
personal
ballad
by
Cuomo
about his parents’ divorce, his
stepfather and alcoholism. But
where “Say It Ain’t So” felt
perfectly crafted and poetic,
these new songs were messy
diary entries scrawled at 2 a.m.,
filled with awkward moments
and way too much information.
Pinkerton
explores
Cuomo’s
Asian fetish, his infatuation with
a lesbian and all of his deepest
insecurities about fame and sex
in the most painful detail.
While initial reaction was
infamously negative, the record
soon gained a cult following
and an eventual reputation as
the best Weezer album — which
means that plenty of bands still
cite it as an influence. Within
less than ten years, emo went
mainstream,
as
groups
like
Brand
New,
Paramore,
My
Chemical Romance and Simple
Plan wrote catchy, overwrought
anthems of the suffering caused
by teenage hormones.
While I think all of these bands
are great in their own right,
their hit songs, coupled with the
lesser efforts of trendy imitators,
created the idea of the “emo
aesthetic.” This label is perhaps
best exemplified by Dashboard
Confessional, whose frontman,
Chris Carrabba, is the platonic
ideal of emo. He’s a heavily
tattooed, broodingly handsome
acoustic-guitar
strummer
whose songs are almost always
addressed to a beautiful female
“you” who constantly gives him
unbearable stress, hope, joy and
pain.
Carrabba’s 2002 performance
on on “MTV Unplugged” might
be the defining moment of emo.
He wasn’t an especially famous
artist at that point in his career
(Unplugged is his only album to
go platinum), but Carrabba is
surrounded by adoring young
fans who sing every word back
to him throughout the entire
show, amplifying and validating
all his most personal lyrics. It
establishes
this
relative
unknown
as a great leader,
a
quasi-spiritual
guide
whose
messages are filled
with great meaning
for his followers,
and it opens your
mind to how much
impact a non-pop
emo artist can have
on
people
who
understand
what
they’re saying.
As
more
and
more kids became
devoted
to
what
these singers had to say, the
oversharing
and
spitefulness
of many emo rock artists soon
spread to other genres. Kanye
West’s 808s and Heartbreak and
Yeezy’s general lack of a filter
call to mind Pinkerton, while
Drake’s tendency to name and
describe his exes in vivid detail
feels petty while also giving
his songs an extra level of
relatability. For many of these
artists, authenticity is no longer
the rejection of corporations
or the cultivation of a “tough
guy” image — it’s the revelation
of their darkest secrets for the
entertainment of a paying crowd.
But when painful emotions
become a path to money, how do
we actually deal with the pain?
In a piece for The Ringer from
last year, Rachel Premack looked
at the popular community of
Tumblr users that suffer from
depression. They post black-
and-white pictures of a sad,
lonely looking Lana Del Rey,
or quotes like: “It’s not that I
Lo Theisen explores the misassociation of emo and angst
don’t enjoy being alive, but my
favourite part of being alive
is
being
asleep.”
Premack’s
piece
explored
the
conflict
and challenges of creating a
community that accepts and
destigmatizes
mental
illness
without romanticizing it.
“It became cool to define
yourself by mental illness (on
Tumblr),” one user is quoted
as saying. “Like, in order to be
interesting or valid, you had to
have some kind of it.”
In the same way, new emo
artists
are
often
judged by the depth
of their backstories
and pain of their
past
experiences.
The
traumas
of
songwriters
make
them
interesting
and cool. The worst
thing
that’s
ever
happened to them is
the best thing they
have to offer the
public.
To quote fellow
columnist
Will
Stewart, “When did
hating yourself and
feeling like you’re going to have
a heart attack become a bragging
right?”
But a new wave of bands is
cutting against the trend of
aestheticized pain, using their
music as a path for real artistic
catharsis and reminding us of
its true power. Modern Baseball,
originally a catchy band that
whined about girls a lot, has
matured a great deal and now use
their platform for social activism
and the destigmatization of
mental illness. The Hotelier
consistently has some of the
best lyrics in rock, words that
perfectly
characterize
the
psychological
fight
against
darkness. Meanwhile, Hop Along
vocalist Frances Quinlan imbues
every words she sings with
nearly unfathomable emotion
and power, and Kevin Abstract
continued to tell heartfelt stories
and create better representation
for queer rappers with last year’s
American Boyfriend.
Most recently, the punk band
Sorority
Noise
has
released
You’re Not As_____As You Think,
already one of the best records
of the year and a potential
landmark work in how we think
about pain and art.
To get the elephant out of the
room, yes, You’re Not As_____As
You Think is “depressing.” In
“Disappeared,” singer Cameron
Boucher notes that “just this
year I lost a basketball team to
heaven,” and of this group, the
suicide of a friend named Sean in
particular hangs heavy over the
music. The opening track sees
Boucher forget that Sean is dead
and make an impromptu visit to
his old house. “I saw you in there
/ But I was looking at myself,”
he sings hauntingly. Each track
that follows continues to explore
Boucher’s isolation, the pain
and the grief caused by these
tragedies.
But Boucher is not simply a
man wallowing in his sadness,
looking for pity from fans.
You’re
Not
As_____As
You
Think is a brief album, and each
word he sings sounds carefully
considered, straining to hold
the weight of a thousand other
sentiments
left
unsaid.
He
pictures these touching images
of where his friends are now,
imagining them listening to The
Gaslight Anthem in heaven or
“shooting jumpers with Jesus,
Mary and Joseph.” He’s trying so
hard to fight against numbness
and
anxiety
and
loneliness,
searching for humanity and
connection and reality.
All
stereotypes
are
dehumanizing, and while some
are more harmful than others,
the idea of emo rock as a genre for
privileged kids to whine about
their lame problems has never
been more untrue or unfair to its
artists. These melodies and lyrics
are vehicles for connection and
sanity in a terrifying, sometimes
awful world. At the core of emo
isn’t a glamorization of sadness
or death, but an all-out, high-
stakes battle for life.
LAUREN THEISEN
Daily Music Columnist
‘Turtle’ tells simple but
enchanting tale of hope
SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
Still from animated film ‘The Red Turtle’
Most survival movies end
in rescue. In “The Martian,”
Matt Damon makes it home to
tell his tale; in “127 Hours,”
James Franco, albeit painfully,
escapes
the
boulder
that
entraps him; in “Cast Away,”
Tom Hanks makes it off that
godforsaken
island,
sadly
without Wilson. While these
films
follow
the
familiar
structure of shipwreck, despair
and rescue, “The Red Turtle,”
directed by Michaël Dudok de
Wit (“Father and Daughter”)
details a similar narrative in
completely
different
terms.
There is no
physical
rescue
in
“The
Red
Turtle,”
no
return home,
no
grand
welcome
reception,
no
special
on the news.
The rescue is
the life that
our castaway
makes on the island that
imprisoned him. Perhaps what
the film reveals is that survival
is
more
about
improving
the
present
situation
than
escaping it. “The Red Turtle”
is a beautifully animated film
about survival, but moreso
about life and the events that
define it.
“The Red Turtle” begins
with an unnamed castaway,
thrust from his small boat
onto an isolated island. He is
frustrated,
fed
up and alone. He
sets sail thrice
on a handmade
raft,
but
each
time the raft is
mysteriously
hit from below
and dismantled.
Our castaway is
then forced to
swim back to the
island, left alone yet again. He
discovers that the source of
his raft’s destruction is a large
red turtle. The turtle makes
its way to the
island, and in
a
blind
rage
our
castaway
kills the turtle,
leaving it for
dead.
Days
pass
and
he
feels
remorse
for
killing
the
turtle;
he
attempts
to
revive
it
and fails. The
turtle then transforms into a
beautiful red-headed woman.
Long story short, the castaway
and
turtle-turned-woman
fall in love and have a baby,
who
possesses
the
human
appearance of his father, but
the aquatic (and turtle-like)
capabilities of his mother. The
son leaves to explore what else
the world has to offer, leaving
his parents alone on the island.
Years pass and the couple has
gone gray with age, our castaway
dies in his sleep as
an old man, lying
next to his love.
She wakes up to
find
him
dead,
cries over his body
in mourning and
turns
back
into
the red turtle. The
screen
fades
to
black as she returns
to her home in the
ocean.
“The Red Turtle” is subtle
both in narrative and animation.
The film’s aesthetic is minimal,
yet breathtaking. The simple,
line-drawn characters contrast
nicely with the deeply textured
landscapes of the island and the
ocean. The lack of dialogue, while
sometimes slow, is a welcome
change
from
the
talkative
anthropomorphic characters of
animation’s past and present.
The creatures in the film are
full of personality without the
need for excessive chatter. For
example,
the
crabs
develop
their own dance through their
charming actions and antics, like
following our castaway around
wherever he goes.
The narrative is simple, but
with a magical, beautiful twist.
“The Red Turtle” may be a tale
of survival, but tells the story in
a way that emphasizes thriving
over surviving.
BECKY PORTMAN
Daily Arts Writer
“The Red
Turtle”
Sony Pictures
Classics
The Michigan
Theater
In an unusual tale of adaptation and transformation,
animated film “The Red Turtle” enthralls and captivates
New emo
artists are often
judged by the
depth of their
backstories
and pain of
their past
experiences
“The Red
Turtle” is subtle
in both narrative
and animation
FILM REVIEW