#AlyssaSpeichert

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"All Over the World" -- The Ladies of SNL, Anna Kendrick, and Icona Pop

I'm mainly posting this songs for shits and giggles, but I think the song does raise an interesting question.  For rappers, its old hat and normal to have a song about all the women they've had sex with; however, why does it seem creepy and weird when women sing about having sex with all these men?

Food for thought (though mostly for laughs) 

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We haven't really talked about romcoms in a while, but please just read the brief description and watch the trailer. This is probably the funniest thing I'll see today.

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"Heaven" -- The Walkmen

So, there are a couple reasons why I've been waiting to post this as my last song.

1.) When I first heard this song a year or so ago, I thought it was a really touching song about a couple who have been together for a while, but perhaps have lost that spark, and are trying to get it back.  This happens to so many couples these days, and I don't many do enough to fix it before throwing in the towel. I thought this song sent such a strong message about fighting for a relationship and not giving up on each other when things get a little rough or have lost the spark.

2.) Then they played this song during the last scene of How I Met Your Mother. NON-SPOILERY! In that scene, I was reminded that the entire show has been one long story leading up to a certain point and a certain relationship. I thought that the lyrics "Remember, remember all we fight for" fit perfectly into how the entire series had building up to this and how Ted had been telling his children all along about what he fought for all those years: love.

3.) Then I saw this video. Though it doesn't really portray the song in the way I had viewed it, I was again reminded that songs are always up for interpretation, especially love songs. In this case, the Youtuber thought the song was about friendships and how eventually we all grow apart in someway or another. It's such a beautiful video and such a touching tribute to the show, and especially now that many of us are graduating, I thought it was a tribute to all the hilarious and weird stories that each of us will be able to cherish for years.

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By preaching acceptance and questioning gender, the company's kids films offer a queer-studies crash course.

I thought this was an extremely eye-opening article.  While I knew that there had been much discussion over the movie Frozen and Elsa's struggle with her ice powers as a metaphor for her hidden sexuality, I was surprised by the number of other Disney movies that have also been interpreted through queer theory.  The point in the article that I thought was most revealing (and heartbreaking) was when the author discusses Beauty and the Beast and the lyricist Howard Ashman, who was dying from AIDS while working on the film. The description of how the film was Ashman's personal story (with the Beast as metaphor for AIDS) was riveting. However, while I can see how the more modern Disney classics have subversive stories, I have a hard time figuring out how to apply queer theory to older films like Snow White or Cinderella.  

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As all of you are well aware, we have had many lengthy and insightful discussions in our class about race, gender, sexual orientation, and the inequalities that have been born and bred in our society and culture. One of my past professors mentioned this book to me in passing recently, and I just remembered the title and thought to look it up.  From the little that I have had time to read, author Linda Mizejewski dives right into many of the issues we have talked about, including the gaze, "black looks," and identity.  While I loved that I was able to understand the author's arguments because of our class, I really loved that I was able to relate to the women she is talking about. I greatly admire all of the female comics that Mizejewski analyzes, and appreciate that they are getting this kind of scholarly attention.  Female comics, of every race, sexual orientation, or class, are still faced with the dynamic of pretty vs. funny: pretty women aren't funny, funny women aren't pretty, women HAVE to be pretty in order to be funny, or women in general aren't funny at all (as was believed by famed SNL legend John Belushi and many others).  Having more people address this problem is a step in the right directions. 

Please read pages 24-29 (or really the entire introduction), where Mizejewski outlines what she discusses and analyzes in her book, and see how she compares these great comedy writers and performers with bell hooks, postfeminist ideals, and camp.

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Ben Lee -- "Love Me Like the World is Ending"

I fell in love with Ben Lee's music a few years ago, and this is one of my favorite songs that he's recorded.  A lot of his music is very happy and uplifting, and very easy to dance in the car to!

My interpretation of the song is that he is trying to convey how completely he loves the recipient of his affections. He loves them through the happy and sad times, and sees their love as something joyful. He basically says that he will love all of them, even their flaws, until "the world is ending." All he asks is that they do the same.

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Today in class, we hypothesized a lot about what the role of religion and gaze played in the film Don Jon.  Here, JGL (as writer, director, producer, actor) discusses his intentions behind the use of religion as a both a metaphor for Jon's objectifying nature and lack of connection, and as a tool to showcase his transformation into a man then yearning for those connections.  

However, what I found most fascinating was actress Brie Larson's response to feminism and the film. Like her one line in the film, I thought that her answer was very interesting: "There is something in this film, the idea that a beautiful woman becomes public property and that because she is beautiful anybody gets the opportunity to look at her because she’s 'flaunting it.'" Given our in-class discussions of the 'gaze', how do you feel this fits (or doesn't) into our understanding? I wasn't particularly sure what to make of it, but I thought I would pass it along. 

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The headline pretty much tells you all you need to know.

Now, this commercial is too relatively new to have had an article written about it, but I just saw this while turning on the news earlier this evening. I thought that it so related to our discussion we had in class today about gender performance.  

For those of you unfamiliar with the X-Men franchise and the character of Mystique, I can't really help you; however, judging from the commercial it seems fairly obvious that Mystique (the naked blue lady) has the power to shapeshift. Which then brings into question what she does right before eating her Hardee's Bacon Cheeseburger: she "genderbends" into a man (and a strong, scruffy, "man's man" at that). This is even further emphasized by the tag line "Man Up for 2x the Bacon", indicating that it's truly a burger for men. It really exemplifies the performance ideals about how men are expected to be presented to others vs. their female counterparts. 

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Starship -- "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now"

My dad has always been weirdly in love with this song, and whenever it comes on in the car with me and my mom he likes to sings it off-key and totally over the top to make us laugh. But it does have a good message that love can help people get through tough times and come out on top in the end, better for it.

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Panti Bliss has riled up conservative Catholics and won global admirers in a tour de force that is dominating Irish water-cooler talk

Given what we have watched in All About My Mother, I thought I would share this article and video with you.  I thought that the movie made a very odd claim about transvestites vs. drag queens, almost arguing that drag queens aren’t “queer” enough.  However, this does not mean that they are any less oppressed or subject to homophobia by the general public than transvestites.  In the case of the article, Panti discusses how oppressive it is to be gay in Ireland, a majority Catholic Republican state who (though they may have passed a law permitting civil unions) is still an extremely homophobic country (much like Spain).  I studied there last spring semester, and there were several large-scale marches and protests against homosexuality and the possibility of the Taoiseach and the Ministers passing a gay marriage bill (which honestly will most likely not happen in the near future).  Even if you don’t agree with homosexuality or everything Panti says, I still believe this is an important article to read, if only to be a well-informed citizen of the world.

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Time After Time -- Margaret Whiting

I'm such a big sucker for music from the post-war era, and I simply love this song.  It reminds me so much of my great-grandparents.  Irene and Carl were married for over 60 years, and were such a cute and classy couple. I can just see them playing this song on a record player in their house and slow dancing in the living room, or dancing to this at some fancy-shmancy lounge bar in downtown Chicago, dressed to the nines. It just puts a smile on my face every time I hear it. 

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"Be chill and don’t be a downer, act like a dude but look like a supermodel."

I thought this was a perfect article to go back to our discussion about how women are expected to be everything to everyone.  In the case of this article, the author talks about the myth of the Cool Girl, the girl who is hot and beautiful but likes to chug a beer. The book brought into question here (Gone Girl) is an excellent novel, and does a very good job of disseminating the Cool Girl and how it's just a facade.  Bringing Jennifer Lawrence into the discussion I thought was edgy, as she "seems" to be just as crazy and normal as us and everybody LOVES her; however, through the eyes of this so-called Cool Girl analysis, could J-Law just be putting on a show for us?  Is she trying to project an image of the hot girl who's just "one of the guys"?  Are people starting to pick up on it? (i.e. Jared Leto at the Oscars, wondering if J-Law's red carpet fall was "a bit of an act" http://www.eonline.com/news/518526/jared-leto-throws-shade-at-jennifer-lawrence-s-oscars-fall-i-m-starting-to-wonder-if-it-s-all-an-act )  

P.S. In addition, there's a small bit on Jane Fonda in Barbarella and how it's pure campy goodness.

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From The Moment That I Met You -- The Big Bang Theory

I know this might not be considered a love song compared to many of the videos that I've seen us post so far, but I would be remiss if I didn't include this song for my own benefit. I've seen every episode of The Big Bang Theory so far, and this (to me) is the most heartfelt moment of the entire series.  It speaks so much about how love can change an entire person's life, as shown by how much Bernadette changed Howard.  For those of you who don't know the show, at the beginning of the series, Howard was the absolute last person one would expect to get married: he was an incredibly geeky horndog who lived with his mother and had no idea how to find a woman. It was so endearing to watch Bernadette and their relationship transform him into an incredibly loving (albeit still dorky!) husband who finally found himself and moved out of his mother's house. Though I may not understand all of the sci-fi references in this song, the message is clear: Howard wouldn't be the man he is today without Bernadette.

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Throwback Saturday to when we discussed how there's a double standard in Hollywood when it comes to men and women in films; in this case, the article and actress Olivia Wilde are discussing how even today women are often sidelined and have very little dialogue. However, I bring this article to your attention not only because it outlines the problem in Hollywood and the media, but with regards to our class, romantic comedies are really one of the few film genres where women have very large speaking parts. This can be assumed to be a result of the main target audience. I encourage you to watch the video embedded in the article, as Wilde brings up a few surprising and noteworthy points (for example, did you know Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley in Alien was written for a man? Now it's her most iconic role.)

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After our discussions about feminism on Tuesday, I thought this was a great article that brought up a lot of important questions about feminism and how our Western exportation of feminist ideals has clouded what is truly a cultural problem and not solely or necessarily a gender problem.  In American media, Pussy Riot is portrayed, as the author describes, riot grrls who are fighting for free speech and the women of Russia; however, what is "lost in translation" is the socio-political context of their protests and what they are trying to prove.

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After seeing Jessica's post about the Nat King Cole song from The Parent Trap, it got me thinking.  Sure, the film is mainly a kid-hijinks tale about twins who find each other and get into all sorts of trouble.  However, as Jessica pointed out, it's also a romantic comedy between Dennis Quaid and the late Natasha Richardson.  What I think is unique about this is that typical Disney film romances are centered on young men and women, not couples who are our parents' age.  While this (very short) article does a good job pointing out that The Parent Trap is a romantic comedy, I think it's an intriguing idea that this is a movie so many of us grew up on, however one I don't think many of us every really considered to be a romantic comedy. We were so engrossed in the slapstick humor that we never really noticed that, like the romantic comedies we are now all used to, much of the plot is driven by the romance between Quaid and Richardson. Much like Nancy Meyers' other adult romantic comedies such as It's Complicated and Something's Gotta Give, the couple portrayed are not young people who have never really ever been in love; these are adults who have loved and lost before. Perhaps we can now recognize more fully that The Parent Trap is indeed a romantic comedy because we are older and have more exposure, but anyways, food for thought...