So as part of my job I get a lot of emails from PR people. A lot of it is useful and enjoyable to receive, but once in a while I get one that is so fucking offensive and jarring to me. See below, and maybe you can tell me why....
In 1968 a young woman was found dead along a dirt road near Eagle Creek, north of Georgetown, Kentucky. For thirty years, she was known only as 'Tent Girl', the name given to her by the Kentucky Post & Times Star because she'd been found wrapped in canvas resembling a tent bag. This album is a series of overlapping narratives inspired by her story as re-imagined to incorporate imagery and locales from Matt Bauer's rural Kentucky upbringing. These songs explore what it means to be home and to be lost, what it means to pass from life to death.
Gentle reader, if there is one thing I must impart to you, is that I am a feminist. And feminism doesn't always translate to certain subcultures, like, oh, the typical straight white male world, no matter how sensitive, creative and liberal they appear.
One scenario/archetype that never really goes away in our overarching narrative as a (white, patriarchal) culture is "the dead girl". Other variations of this are "the dying girl", "the troubled girl", "mentally ill girl", etc. etc. What these narratives usually all entail to make them work is that the girl is always pretty, nubile, and in need of a man to help rescue them. In this case referenced above, it is the actually the musician, Matt Baer, metaphorically bringing the dead girl back to life by telling her story, dragging her out of history. It doesn't hurt to sell the product that the girl pictured nipples are showing(are they erect? WTF?). This caring nurturing man may be actually bringing the sexy, lost, dead girl back to life! By telling her story for her.
This is just one example.But if you look for it, all kinds of variations/incarnations of this abound in the media, in all kinds of art/music we listen to, underground or not. Just a little bit of a deeper rub when it comes from the supposedly "indie", "alternative" land.
2 comments:
i see some difference in "telling her story for her" and "telling her story for her while objectifying her in the typical physical ways."
for instance, i might argue that the telling to make art is a form of colonizing her experience and thus objectifying, but i might then counter-argue that it is okay to tell stories that you are not part of through art (in fact, this is what i argue: that art is for making sense of things we wonder about, and it is right and fine to wonder outside of our personal experience).
still, i'm with you on the overall not coolness here, and this is because of the cover art. as you noted, it's there for it's selling points. selling, as in, to make a sale.
anyway, yeah, this is sick, and you are right, it is everywhere. i am sorry this was in your inbox. what did you do? like, did you forward this blog post to the artist? i hope you did.
Yes, totally, I actually first made this writing way longer, like, it is meant to be a good thing that the artist is illuminating an unspoken tale of tragic murder, but then sexualizing it sort of renders it useless...and do they even get it, this is such an inherent visual language of our culture is it even conscious...anyway i emailed the PR person back and told them to take me off their list.
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