2B — Thursday, March 28, 2019
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Poppy’s YouTube videos feel 

like “Twin Peaks”’s famous Red 
Room scenes. Her contrived 
speech, 
often 
dubbed 
over 

surreal electronic soundscapes, 
serves to critique cliché, fake 
and overstated online social 
interactions. Though some give 
her less credit than this, her rise to 
fame nonetheless demonstrates 
how much we continue to 
encourage 
artificiality 
and 

naiveté in women.

Poppy’s childish and wide-

eyed appearance and behavior is 
a large part of her initial appeal. 
Listening to her mesmerizingly 
high-pitched, monotone voice 
forces you to stay. And to click on 
the next video. And the next. She 
constantly holds over our head 
the promise of finding out where 
she came from and who she is 
while never revealing more.

And you can’t “find” her 

identity with a quick Google 
search either. She was born 
Moriah Rose Pereira in Boston, 
and moved to Nashville as a child 
before moving to LA to start her 
career. When asked where she’s 
from, she simply replies, “I came 
from the internet.”

Many of her videos are nothing 

more than her listing things. In 
one she lists historical figures. In 
another she lists things she likes. 
In another she lists some phrases 
she’s found on the internet:

“Young girl makes crazy video 

on Youtube, what happens next 

you won’t believe your eyes!”

“Thank you so much for all of 

your support.”

“I wish I could explain to you 

how happy I am.”

And, when she’s not robotically 

regurgitating information she’s 
found online, she’ll make an 
off-kilter comment that makes 
us wonder if there’s something 
more to her (or if she’s okay?):

“If it’s on the internet it’s 

~reaaal~. Do you believe in the 
internet?”

“Am I a girl?”
“This planet makes sense to 

me.”

So where does she come from? 

Where is she coming from with 
these videos? The only hint 
we’re ever given is a plug for 
her creative director, Titanic 
Sinclair. Sinclair has videos of 
himself doing much the same 
thing as Poppy on his YouTube 
channel, but his videos only 
garner a fraction of Poppy’s 
video’s views.

This 
suggests 
Poppy’s 

appearance is a pivotal part of 
her persona. Why her? Well, 
her petite, doll-like qualities 
and unassuming expression all 
play into disturbingly idealized 
notions of the female figure — all 
notions that have come to be fully 
integrated into our construction 
of actual robots.

Gendering robots has existed 

long before we could make any 
functional beings of the sort (“I’ll 
be your freak-a-zoid, come on 
and wind me up”) — but now we 

can. In recent years in Japan, all 
sorts of efforts have been made 
in integrating robots into society. 
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has 
backed all sorts of efforts to have 
humanoids 
become 
integral 

parts of society, from automated 
housewives to policemen.

While there are perks to 

making robots our pals, much 
of the gendering that’s already 
happening is highly problematic. 
It directly follows Japanese 
anime’s fetishization of youth 
and large-breasted, slim waisted 
women. It also reinforces gender 
roles not just in the workplace, 
but also in the very way we 
expect people to talk and behave 
according to their respective 
gender.

Considering 
these 
things, 

Poppy seems to be asking us, 
“Am I the girl you want?” Her 
speech is reminiscent both of the 
uninspiring Instagram captions 
of today and of the idealized 
voices of the humanoids of 
tomorrow. 
It’s 
disappointing 

but not surprising that this 
artificiality doesn’t hold up for 
Titanic Sinclair. Do you really 
think the it-girls of Instagram 
got famous off their wit?

At this rate, we’ll one day have 

automated Barbie dolls sweeping 
our floors. Whether you believe 
Poppy is actually critiquing these 
ideals or basking in her newfound 
popularity (which she always 
knew she could have cause she’s 
pretty!), she certainly makes us 
think about what we value in 
identity, and, more importantly, 
just how much of this needs to be 
carried over to our future robots.

I’M POPPY RECORDS

The thoughtless, thrilling 
world of musician Poppy

BEN VASSAR
Daily Arts Writer

Who Do You Love

The Chainsmokers ft. 5 

Seconds of Summer

Sony Music

MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: ‘WHO DO 

YOU LOVE’

The Chainsmokers’s new 

video for their single “Who 
Do 
You 
Love” 
featuring 

5 
Seconds 
of 
Summer 

presents a Battle of the 
Bands competition between 
the two groups as they 
belt out the song while 
trying to outperform each 
other. Each band takes 
turns wowing the crowd, 
with wild tricks such as 
flaming instruments and 
crowd surfing to draw 
their attention.

The two bands released 

the song back in Feb. and 
have surprised audiences 
with their unpredictable 
collaboration. The single’s 
musical 
style 
seems 
to 

incorporate a good balance of 
the sound fans have come to 
love from both groups. With 
a catchy chorus and simple 
acoustic 
riffs, 
there’s 
no 

doubt this tune was intended 
to be a heartbreak anthem 
for their young audience.

Although the video doesn’t 

focus on the song’s lyrics 
about dying relationships, 

it does give us a taste of 
the youthful wildness and 
passion many artists try to 
hone in on. Set in a garage 
with a crowd dancing and 
singing along, you can feel the 
video’s subjects’ excitement 

in being young and declaring 
that through music. The 
Chainsmokers and 5 Seconds 
of Summer have given us yet 
another heartache singalong 
young people will be dancing 
to for the next few months.
While the moves the bands 
shows off are a little cheesy, 
the 
absurdity 
of 
their 

performances gives off the 
humorous notion that maybe 
we shouldn’t take things 
so seriously. Watching the 
two groups be so carefree 
and goofy makes you want 
to grab a bunch of friends, 
turn the music up and sing 
away the sorrows of young 
heartbreak. 

— Kaitlyn Fox, For The 

Daily

SONY MUSIC

B-SIDE: NEW MEDIA

“The Hills” is coming back this 

year. MTV is reviving its classic 
reality show about the lives of Los 
Angeles’s nouveau riche and calling 
it “The Hills: New Beginnings.” 
Most of the original cast is returning, 
except for the few who managed 
to find upstanding, respectable 
jobs cultivating lifestyle brands 
and Instagramming pinkish-beige 
things with gold accents. In their 
place, MTV is tossing in some new 
faces — Mischa Barton (hmm) and 
Pamela Anderson’s son (HMMM) 
— in the hopes that they’re pretty 
and blonde enough that we’ll forget 
they weren’t there the first time 
around.

It’s just as well, because those 

four years of “The Hills” were a 
bit of a blur anyway. If there was 
anything to be learned from the 
show, it was just how boring your 
life was in comparison to the ones 
these women lived. They worked 
in impossibly chic offices, got bottle 
service at the swankiest clubs and 
they all had gorgeous, terrible 
boyfriends. They walked away 
from lifelong friendships for their 
gorgeous, terrible boyfriends. They 
ruined precious $30 Guerlain Cils 
D’Enfer mascara crying over their 
gorgeous, terrible boyfriends. They 
turned down once-in-a-lifetime 
summer jobs at French Vogue 
to spend more time with their 
gorgeous, terrible boyfriends. God, 
they were so young and dumb and 
strange, but hey, it worked.

Then one day, when it seemed 

like everyone on the show was one 
or two vodka tonics at S Bar from 
committing a violent crime, “The 

Hills” ended. Kristin Cavallari, the 
show’s villain-turned-protagonist, 
decided she was going to move to 
Europe (no country in particular, 
just Europe) and everybody said 
their clumsy, prickly onscreen 
goodbyes. In the final scene, Kristin 
heads out to meet her ride to the 
airport. Who is waiting for her 
but her star-crossed flame Brody 
Jenner (yes, he is gorgeous and yes, 
he is also terrible). They stare at 
each other longingly, banter about 
what might have been, and Kristin 
slips into a town car and speeds 
away.

Cue a clip montage of all the 

good times they have had together, 
set to a stripped-down version of 
Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten.” 
Cut back to a teary-eyed Brody, 
watching Kristin’s car disappear 
into the distance. It has the makings 
of a perfectly anodyne television 
finale until something strange 
happens. The trees and Hollywood 
sign behind Brody move, and the 
camera pulls back to reveal that the 
scene took place on a soundstage. It 
had all been fake!

In that moment, “Unwritten” felt 

almost taunting. Here was this song 
about the unpredictable nature of 
life, about the winding, inchoate 
paths we take. And all the while, 
“The Hills” was, as a matter of fact, 
totally and completely written. 
For six seasons we had laughed 
about how contrived the show’s 
squabbles were, how unlikely 
their 
professional 
successes 

were and how vapid everybody 
seemed. And the whole time, “The 
Hills” had been in on the joke. (Or 
more distressingly, the joke had 
been on us.) A doting, enthralled 
audience was — as Ja Rule put it — 
hustled, scammed, bamboozled, 

hoodwinked and led astray.

The illusion continued to shatter. 

At first, the producers suggested 
that the ending was an open-
ended question of sorts, meant to 
provoke thought about what was 
real and what was fake. In the years 
since, though, the cast has mostly 
stopped 
pretending 
anything 

was real. Kristin and Audrina 
Patridge revealed that a big fight 
between them had never happened. 
Whitney Port said she didn’t 
actually take that Paris internship 
Lauren had turned down. Spencer 
Pratt and Heidi Montag admitted 
that the reason their neighbor’s 
son was always over at their house 
was because it was his house — 
his family’s house was easier to 
film in than the couple’s home in 
the Palisades (so yes, the birthday 
party they threw for little Enzo 
was all the conjuring of some bored 
producer).

I have devoted maybe a third 

of my waking moments (and 
quite possibly a sizeable portion 
of my sleeping moments) to 
contemplating this scene. Was 
it mean? Ridiculous? A cop out? 
Quietly brilliant? Loudly stupid? 
The answer, I think, is yes. Nobody 
watched “The Hills” for vérité. It’s 
an unspoken truth that reality TV 
is more or less a misnomer, but part 
of the thrill of reality television is 
knowing that someone is taking it 
seriously because they have stakes 
in the illusion. That’s what makes 
MTV’s choice baffling — and 
admirable. It was tantamount to 
admitting that they didn’t really 
care about any of it. And they 
especially didn’t care about us. 
“Yeah, we’re fake,” the finale said. 
“What’s it to you?” It doesn’t get 
more real than that.

When ‘The Hills’ admitted 
it was smoke and mirrors

MAITREYI ANATHARAMAN

Daily Arts Writer

MTV

B-SIDE: TV

Imagine you’re standing in a 

room with your friends. One of you 
makes an offhand comment, maybe 
a quick joke. Suddenly, you hear 
echoes of laughter. It’s not yours, 
it’s not your friends’. It doesn’t 
stop. It gets louder, it continues, it 
happens again. Slowly it drives you 
into madness, until all you can hear 
is the shadows of ghostly laughter 
ringing in your ears. This may 
sound like a nightmare, and to many 
(myself included), it is. But this isn’t 
the topic of the next Jordan Peele 
hit or a Hitchcock classic. No, this 
is the horrible reality of so many 
sitcoms and so-called comedies, a 
vehicle of pure torture: The laugh 
track.

The laugh track was first used in 

the “Hank McCune Show” in 1950, 
and it has plagued the TV-watching 
public ever since. First developed 
by CBS sound engineer Charley 
Douglass to “sweeten” audience 
laughter, the laugh track was 
initially used as a way to amplify 
natural audience laughter and 
polish it for a more unified 
sound. Now, the faux chortles are 
generally called upon to make 
drab, overhyped shows that employ 
misogynist tropes and unoriginal 
storylines appear funny. And yes, 
I am talking to you “The Big Bang 
Theory.”

Laugh tracks have become so 

ingrained in popular television 
that one may not even realize the 

effect it has on the show they are 
watching. Tuning in on the laugh 
track is like shattering the glass 
on a friend’s annoying habit: Once 
you notice it, there’s no going back. 
Take a look at what happens when 
the artificial laughter is removed 
from an episode. Without cues on 
what is and isn’t supposed to be a 
joke, all that’s left is an awkward 
and unsettling dialogue that feels 
as pitiful as looking into the living 
room window of a bachelor pad in 
Fort Wayne.

So why are these tracks so hated? 

General consensus points towards 
an annoyance at the induced 
chuckles, but studies show they still 
work. Some of the most beloved 
comedies have used laugh tracks, 
including “Seinfeld,” a show even a 
canned-laughter-hater like myself 
cannot help but enjoy. The success 
of laugh tracks relies on psychology 
and a bit of insecurity. In an 
interview with NBC, Dartmouth 
psychology professor Bill Kelley 
claimed “We’re much more likely 
to laugh at something funny in the 
presence of other people.” You hear 
that sheeple!? We’re all so obsessed 
with being accepted and included 
that we need others to decide when 
we should and should not laugh. To 
that I say: No more.

Some of the best comedies of the 

past and current decade are void 
of a laugh track. “30 Rock,” “It’s 
Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” 
“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Parks 
and Recreation,” “The Office,” 
“Veep” — the list goes on and on. 
Comedy has found its home in the 

mundane and the absurd, not the 
slapstick and the obvious. Why 
are the previously mentioned 
shows so popular? Why do they 
cause uproarious laughter without 
falsified cues? Because laugh tracks 
aren’t real life. They are an artificial 
corporate method that makes a 
TV show feel like a TV show. Yes, 
shows like “The Office” or “Curb” 
often implement some slapstick 
methods, but their humor comes 
in the fact that everyone can see 
their own lives in these characters, 
if not amplified versions. Everyone 
has seen outrageous antics in their 
place of work or ridiculed the way 
the government is run. We’ve all 
wondered what goes on behind the 
scenes of our favorite TV shows 
or poked fun at the bureaucracy. 
We’re already laughing — we don’t 
need sound engineers to tell us why.

Imagine if there were inserted 

gasps at every plot twist in 
“Westworld,” or inputted screams 
at every gunshot in “The Sopranos.” 
It would be a world of absolute 
entertainment chaos. Those who 
favor the laugh track will scorn 
this take, and lament why everyone 
can’t just enjoy what they want to. 
That is fine, everyone has different 
tastes, but I would like to add 
one more thing. Due to Charley 
Douglass’s monopoly on the laugh 
track, most of the soundbytes used 
today are the same ones used in 
the mid to late 20th century. Most 
of the laughs you hear today are 
coming from people who are now 
dead. Perhaps mortality is really 
the greatest joke of them all.

Laugh tracks, yada yada

SAMANTHA DELLA FERA

Senior Arts Editor

B-SIDE: TV

