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