To Emily
From Philip
With Love
Like
To Esmé
In Love
And Squalor
Open
the Garage
Door
It's
Cold
Just
Do it
Already.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Fifteen
Fifteen is the year where you can begin
to hope to be sixteen. Where
you can begin to have a mid
life crisis. Where
you weigh
your life
in accomplishments
Maybe even buy
a new convertible.
Fifteen is when you turn thirty-
nine Sixteen is when
you turn forty except
without the driver
's license.
Here is my gift to you
When you become thirty-nine
May you turn fifteen again
Waiting for sixteen-
to hope to be sixteen. Where
you can begin to have a mid
life crisis. Where
you weigh
your life
in accomplishments
Maybe even buy
a new convertible.
Fifteen is when you turn thirty-
nine Sixteen is when
you turn forty except
without the driver
's license.
Here is my gift to you
When you become thirty-nine
May you turn fifteen again
Waiting for sixteen-
Thursday, May 14, 2009
“Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me”: The Case of Susan Boyle in Relation to
Neither Woody Guthrie nor Billy Bragg could have imagined Susan Boyle. Yet Guthrie’s lyrics for his song “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key” describe someone very much like her (“Wilco”). The second stanza of this song has a male narrator-singer singing, “She said it’s hard for me to see / How one little boy got so ugly / Yes my little girly that might be / But there ain’t nobody that can sing like me / Ain’t nobody that can sing like me.” While Boyle is female and would be better classified as the “little girly” instead, in all other ways she’s like the little boy. She’s ugly. But she can sing. And with that sole talent, Boyle has been co-opted by society to stand for a myriad of abstractions and has also been judged for worth in pieces instead of as a complete whole.
Like the narrator-singer in “Way Over Yonder,” Boyle was also from a small and relatively unknown town. Few people know of the county Okfuskee, and probably fewer (pre-Boyle) knew of West Lothian in Scotland, which houses Boyle’s hometown of Blackburn. Actually, when pressed by Cowell, Boyle admits Blackburn is more of “a collection of villages” (Britain’s), to add to the heart-rending story of country-girl-gone-to-big-city-with-dreams-of-“making it big.”
Susan Boyle made her debut on the show Britain’s Got Talent on April 11, 2009. In the brief chitchat period backstage to the hosts and then to the judges while onstage, Boyle revealed many things. One, she was forty-eight. Two, she had never been kissed and never had a boyfriend. Three, she lives alone with her cat Pebbles after her mother died two years ago. And, as everyone could plainly see, Boyle was decidedly ugly. She had graying hair, was plump without the pleasure of being zaftig, and her face – well, let’s just say that it was a far cry from Talent judge Amanda Holden’s perfectly smooth and made-up face.
While enduring snide comments and grimacing faces from the judges and the audience, Boyle informs everyone that she is going to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Broadway musical Les Misérables and that she wants to be a professional singer like Elaine Paige. The laughing and mockery quickly stops when Boyle begins to sing, and it turns out this ugly “little girly” really can sing. Judge Simon Cowell looks besotted (probably at all the money Boyle can bring in); judge Piers Morgan looks amazed; and Holden looks alternately touched by God or close to tears. On a particularly soaring note the audience and Holden jump to their feet in a standing ovation. The time while Boyle’s on stage post-singing is almost post-coital: The judges sigh and coo on about “how good it was” and the TV production crew is shrewd enough to leave the inspiring music of “I Dreamed a Dream” continuously playing in the background. Now Boyle even has the possibility of recording a duet with her role model, Paige. “It looks like I have competition!” Paige exclaims. “Perhaps we can record a duet?” (Davies).
Boyle’s unfortunate unattractiveness began at birth. Leigh Holmwood from The Guardian writes, “The youngest of nine children, Boyle suffered oxygen deprivation during birth, resulting in learning disabilities.” As a result she was bullied and took comfort in her musical talent. Boyle says, “I come from a musical family…it has always been there...singing is always something I have done. It has been in my blood since I was 12 and took part in school productions and shows” (Harris; Holmwood). Now middle-aged, while any trace of her learning disability is gone, Boyle’s ugliness is still apparent. Her eyebrows resemble hairy black caterpillars; she has two chins; her dress is frumpy; she has a potbelly.
As of April 17th, over 26 million people had seen her sing via YouTube, and 2.3 million saw her on the Britain’s Got Talent website. Added to the people who viewed it the old-fashioned way, on TV, 11 million viewers had seen Boyle within the time span of a week (Holmwood). On Twitter Ashton Kutcher informed his 1.6 million followers that “This just made my night” to which his wife Demi Moore tweeted back “You saw it made me teary!” (Holmwood).
Lest these millions of viewers become too teary-eyed, an important point must be made pertaining to judge Simon Cowell. Max Clifford, who represents Cowell, revealed information that tarnishes the “dream magic” of Boyle’s performance and her underdog status: “Cowell was raving about Boyle weeks before her audition even aired and his support…meant audiences sat up and listened…People had their cards marked…There was no question people were on to her…He said you have got to see the first episode. As soon as I saw it I could see it had all the ingredients” (“Susan Boyle: a dream come true”). These ingredients were the things that would pull the heartstrings of the millions of viewers and inspire countless bloggers to pound out blog posts on who Boyle was, why she was important, and what she meant to each of them, personally. In the minutes after Boyle’s performance where the judges give feedback and make their decisions on whether the contestant will continue on to the semi-finals or not, Simon, after his dramatic eye-rolling and sarcastic glances at the other judges pre-performance, says with (supposed?) sincerity, “I knew the minute you walked out on that stage that we were going to get something extraordinary and I was right” (Britain’s).
Yet Clifford still insists that “This isn’t about spin or a PR creation, it is a natural phenomenon.” Perhaps it was this need for an illusion of a “natural phenomenon” on heavily-edited reality TV that prompted the outcry of everyone from fans to PR people that Boyle should not tamper with her natural looks with any sort of makeover. Apparently, this idea was held so strictly that when Boyle got a new look that included dyed hair, tweezed eyebrows and some makeup there was some backlash, even though this was not the most dramatic of makeovers (Greenblatt 17). Boyle herself contends that this was not a makeover, that she was just tidying herself up, “like any other female would have done” (“Susan Boyle Speaks Out on Makeover”). Mark Harris of Entertainment Weekly comments on the backlash thus:
The recent outcry that Boyle shouldn’t get a makeover because that will make her less “real” follows along those lines. This, “You mustn’t change a thing” nonsense is coming form people who, despite their smug sermonizing that Boyle has taught us never to judge a book by its cover, are doing exactly that. They’re treating her like an adorable pet hobbit, not a person. Don’t they know that people who are belittlingly praised for their inner also like to look good? (20)
Another condition Boyle’s fame and fan support seems to rely on is her lonely romantic life. The argument can be made that sexual liberation has arrived, but the fact that she’s single and “never been kissed” is almost a prerequisite for her to be a loved underdog. The reception Boyle would have gotten would have been much different if she had confessed to being promiscuous instead; then instead of being a poor unfortunate woman finally given a chance to go for her dreams she would have merely been probably charmingly described as an “ugly whore.” Her plight also lends a sense of schadenfreude to the female viewers: hey, I might have trouble with men, but at least I’m not that bad! Boyle’s story was briefly under fire when it was revealed that she had been kissed before. However, the media’s fears about Boyle’s innocent chastity were allayed when the kisses Boyle received were only from a non-threatening male, her 51 year old neighbor Brian Smith. “I’ve given her many a peck on the cheek to say “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right” (“Susan Boyle ‘has been kissed’”). Yet the fact that a couple of comforting kisses on the cheek are enough to cause media headlines speaks volumes about what our society’s sexual expectations are when it comes to women.
Not everyone is entranced with dumpy Boyle. Since England and America are, as lovingly put by George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, two countries separated by the same language, it is inevitable that Boyle’s dark horse performance on Britain’s Got Talent would find a massive, receptive audience in the US. In fact, it was Cowell who created the sister series America’s Got Talent (“Simon”). Mark Blankenship may be awed that Boyle’s performance “is currently one of the to 50 best sellers on iTunes, meaning a scene from a show we can’t even watch in this country has prompted the kind of sales that are usually reserved for nationally broadcast hits like American Idol,” but one must remember that Cowell also serves as one of the most recognizable judges on Idol, so, is this really that shocking (Blankenship; “Simon”)? What is perhaps a tad more shocking is that the news of Boyle has reached as far as China, a country where Cowell has no dominion over (yet).
David P. Goldman who writes under the pseudonym “Spengler” for the Asia Times found Boyle’s newfound fame to be disgusting and indicative of arrogant Western attitudes. His article “Why the West is Boyle’d” attributes Boyle’s instant success to the West’s desire to praise mediocrity: “That Boyle has come to embody the triumph of ordinary people over obscurity…is disheartening. The popular audience in the West likes to validate its own mediocrity, and crowns stars-for-a-day.” He continues to explain,
Churlish resentment of high culture comes from the slacker’s desire for reward with neither merit nor effort: the sort of artistic skill that requires years of discipline and sacrifice is a reproach to the indolence of the popular audience of the West. Better voices than Boyle’s can be found in a thousand choirs and amateur theatricals, but the crowd has embraced this late-hatching Scottish songbird as a symbol of its own aspirations.
Who are these “better voices” Goldman writes about? “East Asian singers, particularly Koreans, are working their way up the ranks of provincial opera companies, and every one of them sings better than Boyle.” While his vitriol undermines his argument considerably, one still cannot argue with his statistics:
[In China] Nearly 40 million children study classical piano, and another 15 million or so learned to play stringed instruments. Nearly 60 million young Chinese in all are learning Western classical music, and learning it the hard way, under teachers who demand mastery of technique, paid by parents who have scraped together tuition and demand regular practice. Sixty million is a big number, considering that there are only 30 million Americans aged five to 18. Of these, perhaps 5 to 6 million study piano, but few with the intensity of their Chinese counterparts.
Guthrie did not live long enough to see the advent of reality TV, but a good imagination can fill in the chronological gaps enough to know that Guthrie would be the most unlikely contestant on a singing reality show. In fact, the “Dust Bowl Troubadour” would probably be singing against it (“Robert”). Guthrie’s song “Way Over Yonder” is simple and pensive and without all the bells and whistles of reality TV. Unlike the contestants of reality TV that try to grab fame hand over fist however they can, Guthrie’s song makes no demands of anyone; it merely makes quiet personal reflections without censure, exaggeration, and self-aggrandizement.
The lyrics for “Way Over Yonder” gives us very few details concerning the relationship between the little boy and little girl. First of all, there is no mention of age, although one assumes they are not so “little” that they are incapable of having sex. Second, there is no mention about how this boy got this girl in a “holler” (probably hollow) tree if she is so put off by his ugliness “It’s hard for me to see / how one little boy got so ugly” (“Wilco”). Lastly, any other details about the narrator’s life are conspicuously absent. Besides his leading lots of girls astray with his talent, there is nothing else about who he is, what he does, or even how he feels.
“Way Over Yonder” and the attention surrounding Boyle seem to make the statement that our society is okay with ugly people as long as they have a talent. As Harris puts it, “We thought you were dumpy-looking and therefore not worth our attention, but now that we know you can sing, we think the fact that you’re dumpy-looking is fun” (20). If Boyle was without the ability to sing, it is a likely assumption that the viewers in the audience of Britain’s Got Talent would have felt justified about their scorn and felt no remorse for their mockeries. Boyle would have just been another ugly woman that society felt fine about laughing at because of her physical features. In other words, our society finds nothing wrong with its scorn as long as it feels it is “justified” and the person scorned has no way of retaliating.
Both Boyle and the narrator are confined in society because of their physical unattractiveness. The narrator is fully aware of this quandary for ugly people, for what makes this song so haunting is the utter fixation on which the narrator repeats “Ain’t nobody that can sing like me.” Out of the thirty-three lines in the song, about one-third of them contain “Ain’t nobody that can sing like me.” While this could be taken as boasting in other songs and with other singers, Guthrie and Bragg have filled it with sadness and longing. The narrator knows the only reason anyone gives him attention, female or otherwise, is solely because of his singing talent. Furthermore, whereas this was a boon at one time, he begins to find that it is a burden because of how narrowly it defines him. Taking this idea further, it can be said that he seems to be coming to terms with the fact that no one will love him without knowing this part of him, as in no one can ever love him aside of his singing ability because he is known for his singing. It has become an inerasable part of him, and for the rest of his life it will be “Love me because I sing” and never “Love me just because.”
Boyle is famous and loved as long as she remains a novelty, the “cute pet hobbit.” The narrator does not mention fame, but he is keenly aware that his acceptance and importance depends almost solely on his talent. There are other differences between them: One, the narrator of Guthrie’s song is male, and therefore receives no societal censure for leading lots of girls astray. But as for Boyle, as previously mentioned, she must be virginal and pure for society to continue to support her (at least until she begins to date someone that society has approved). Two, while Guthrie’s narrator could be based on Guthrie on account of the same place of birth and singing talent, the song is about a fictional character. Boyle is very real, and she is continuing her fight to be the winner of Britain’s Got Talent starting the 24th of May when the live semi-finals are aired. Yet both Boyle and the narrator understand what it means to be dissected into parts and weighed for worth in individual pieces. For both of them, there is really no such thing as being judged at face value.
Works Cited
Alarik, Scott. “Robert Burns unplugged.” The Boston Globe. 7 Aug. 2005. 11 May 2009
Blankenship, Mark. “Two Reasons Susan Boyle Means So Much to Us.” Huffington Post. 16 Apr. 2009. 11 May 2009.
Britain’s Got Talent 2009. Britain’s Got Talent. ITV. 11 Apr. 2009.
Davies, Caroline, and Paul Kelbie. “Reality TV star Susan Boyle set for duet with idol Elaine Paige.” The Guardian. 19 Apr. 2009. 12 May 2009.
Goldman, David P. “Why the West is Boyle’d.” Asian Times Online. 21 Apr. 2009. 11 May 2009.
Greenblatt, Leah. “Entertainer of the Month April 2009: Susan Boyle.” Entertainment Weekly 8 May 2009: 17.
Harris, Gillian. “She who laughs last - songstress Susan Boyle.” Times Online. 19 Apr. 2009. The Sunday Times. 11 May 2009.
Harris, Mark. “I Dreamed a Dream.” Entertainment Weekly 8 May 2009: 20.
Holmwood, Leigh. “Susan Boyle: a dream come true.” The Guardian. 21 Apr. 2009. 11 May 2009.
“Simon Cowell.” IMDb: The Internet Movie Database. 2009. 11 May 2009
“Susan Boyle ‘has been kissed’, neighbour claims.” Telegraph. 21 Apr. 2009. 11 May 2009.
“Susan Boyle Speaks Out on Makeover.” Us Magazine. 11 May 2009. 12 May 2009.
Wilco, and Billy Bragg. “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key.” Mermaid Avenue. Elektra, 1998.
Like the narrator-singer in “Way Over Yonder,” Boyle was also from a small and relatively unknown town. Few people know of the county Okfuskee, and probably fewer (pre-Boyle) knew of West Lothian in Scotland, which houses Boyle’s hometown of Blackburn. Actually, when pressed by Cowell, Boyle admits Blackburn is more of “a collection of villages” (Britain’s), to add to the heart-rending story of country-girl-gone-to-big-city-with-dreams-of-“making it big.”
Susan Boyle made her debut on the show Britain’s Got Talent on April 11, 2009. In the brief chitchat period backstage to the hosts and then to the judges while onstage, Boyle revealed many things. One, she was forty-eight. Two, she had never been kissed and never had a boyfriend. Three, she lives alone with her cat Pebbles after her mother died two years ago. And, as everyone could plainly see, Boyle was decidedly ugly. She had graying hair, was plump without the pleasure of being zaftig, and her face – well, let’s just say that it was a far cry from Talent judge Amanda Holden’s perfectly smooth and made-up face.
While enduring snide comments and grimacing faces from the judges and the audience, Boyle informs everyone that she is going to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Broadway musical Les Misérables and that she wants to be a professional singer like Elaine Paige. The laughing and mockery quickly stops when Boyle begins to sing, and it turns out this ugly “little girly” really can sing. Judge Simon Cowell looks besotted (probably at all the money Boyle can bring in); judge Piers Morgan looks amazed; and Holden looks alternately touched by God or close to tears. On a particularly soaring note the audience and Holden jump to their feet in a standing ovation. The time while Boyle’s on stage post-singing is almost post-coital: The judges sigh and coo on about “how good it was” and the TV production crew is shrewd enough to leave the inspiring music of “I Dreamed a Dream” continuously playing in the background. Now Boyle even has the possibility of recording a duet with her role model, Paige. “It looks like I have competition!” Paige exclaims. “Perhaps we can record a duet?” (Davies).
Boyle’s unfortunate unattractiveness began at birth. Leigh Holmwood from The Guardian writes, “The youngest of nine children, Boyle suffered oxygen deprivation during birth, resulting in learning disabilities.” As a result she was bullied and took comfort in her musical talent. Boyle says, “I come from a musical family…it has always been there...singing is always something I have done. It has been in my blood since I was 12 and took part in school productions and shows” (Harris; Holmwood). Now middle-aged, while any trace of her learning disability is gone, Boyle’s ugliness is still apparent. Her eyebrows resemble hairy black caterpillars; she has two chins; her dress is frumpy; she has a potbelly.
As of April 17th, over 26 million people had seen her sing via YouTube, and 2.3 million saw her on the Britain’s Got Talent website. Added to the people who viewed it the old-fashioned way, on TV, 11 million viewers had seen Boyle within the time span of a week (Holmwood). On Twitter Ashton Kutcher informed his 1.6 million followers that “This just made my night” to which his wife Demi Moore tweeted back “You saw it made me teary!” (Holmwood).
Lest these millions of viewers become too teary-eyed, an important point must be made pertaining to judge Simon Cowell. Max Clifford, who represents Cowell, revealed information that tarnishes the “dream magic” of Boyle’s performance and her underdog status: “Cowell was raving about Boyle weeks before her audition even aired and his support…meant audiences sat up and listened…People had their cards marked…There was no question people were on to her…He said you have got to see the first episode. As soon as I saw it I could see it had all the ingredients” (“Susan Boyle: a dream come true”). These ingredients were the things that would pull the heartstrings of the millions of viewers and inspire countless bloggers to pound out blog posts on who Boyle was, why she was important, and what she meant to each of them, personally. In the minutes after Boyle’s performance where the judges give feedback and make their decisions on whether the contestant will continue on to the semi-finals or not, Simon, after his dramatic eye-rolling and sarcastic glances at the other judges pre-performance, says with (supposed?) sincerity, “I knew the minute you walked out on that stage that we were going to get something extraordinary and I was right” (Britain’s).
Yet Clifford still insists that “This isn’t about spin or a PR creation, it is a natural phenomenon.” Perhaps it was this need for an illusion of a “natural phenomenon” on heavily-edited reality TV that prompted the outcry of everyone from fans to PR people that Boyle should not tamper with her natural looks with any sort of makeover. Apparently, this idea was held so strictly that when Boyle got a new look that included dyed hair, tweezed eyebrows and some makeup there was some backlash, even though this was not the most dramatic of makeovers (Greenblatt 17). Boyle herself contends that this was not a makeover, that she was just tidying herself up, “like any other female would have done” (“Susan Boyle Speaks Out on Makeover”). Mark Harris of Entertainment Weekly comments on the backlash thus:
The recent outcry that Boyle shouldn’t get a makeover because that will make her less “real” follows along those lines. This, “You mustn’t change a thing” nonsense is coming form people who, despite their smug sermonizing that Boyle has taught us never to judge a book by its cover, are doing exactly that. They’re treating her like an adorable pet hobbit, not a person. Don’t they know that people who are belittlingly praised for their inner also like to look good? (20)
Another condition Boyle’s fame and fan support seems to rely on is her lonely romantic life. The argument can be made that sexual liberation has arrived, but the fact that she’s single and “never been kissed” is almost a prerequisite for her to be a loved underdog. The reception Boyle would have gotten would have been much different if she had confessed to being promiscuous instead; then instead of being a poor unfortunate woman finally given a chance to go for her dreams she would have merely been probably charmingly described as an “ugly whore.” Her plight also lends a sense of schadenfreude to the female viewers: hey, I might have trouble with men, but at least I’m not that bad! Boyle’s story was briefly under fire when it was revealed that she had been kissed before. However, the media’s fears about Boyle’s innocent chastity were allayed when the kisses Boyle received were only from a non-threatening male, her 51 year old neighbor Brian Smith. “I’ve given her many a peck on the cheek to say “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right” (“Susan Boyle ‘has been kissed’”). Yet the fact that a couple of comforting kisses on the cheek are enough to cause media headlines speaks volumes about what our society’s sexual expectations are when it comes to women.
Not everyone is entranced with dumpy Boyle. Since England and America are, as lovingly put by George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, two countries separated by the same language, it is inevitable that Boyle’s dark horse performance on Britain’s Got Talent would find a massive, receptive audience in the US. In fact, it was Cowell who created the sister series America’s Got Talent (“Simon”). Mark Blankenship may be awed that Boyle’s performance “is currently one of the to 50 best sellers on iTunes, meaning a scene from a show we can’t even watch in this country has prompted the kind of sales that are usually reserved for nationally broadcast hits like American Idol,” but one must remember that Cowell also serves as one of the most recognizable judges on Idol, so, is this really that shocking (Blankenship; “Simon”)? What is perhaps a tad more shocking is that the news of Boyle has reached as far as China, a country where Cowell has no dominion over (yet).
David P. Goldman who writes under the pseudonym “Spengler” for the Asia Times found Boyle’s newfound fame to be disgusting and indicative of arrogant Western attitudes. His article “Why the West is Boyle’d” attributes Boyle’s instant success to the West’s desire to praise mediocrity: “That Boyle has come to embody the triumph of ordinary people over obscurity…is disheartening. The popular audience in the West likes to validate its own mediocrity, and crowns stars-for-a-day.” He continues to explain,
Churlish resentment of high culture comes from the slacker’s desire for reward with neither merit nor effort: the sort of artistic skill that requires years of discipline and sacrifice is a reproach to the indolence of the popular audience of the West. Better voices than Boyle’s can be found in a thousand choirs and amateur theatricals, but the crowd has embraced this late-hatching Scottish songbird as a symbol of its own aspirations.
Who are these “better voices” Goldman writes about? “East Asian singers, particularly Koreans, are working their way up the ranks of provincial opera companies, and every one of them sings better than Boyle.” While his vitriol undermines his argument considerably, one still cannot argue with his statistics:
[In China] Nearly 40 million children study classical piano, and another 15 million or so learned to play stringed instruments. Nearly 60 million young Chinese in all are learning Western classical music, and learning it the hard way, under teachers who demand mastery of technique, paid by parents who have scraped together tuition and demand regular practice. Sixty million is a big number, considering that there are only 30 million Americans aged five to 18. Of these, perhaps 5 to 6 million study piano, but few with the intensity of their Chinese counterparts.
Guthrie did not live long enough to see the advent of reality TV, but a good imagination can fill in the chronological gaps enough to know that Guthrie would be the most unlikely contestant on a singing reality show. In fact, the “Dust Bowl Troubadour” would probably be singing against it (“Robert”). Guthrie’s song “Way Over Yonder” is simple and pensive and without all the bells and whistles of reality TV. Unlike the contestants of reality TV that try to grab fame hand over fist however they can, Guthrie’s song makes no demands of anyone; it merely makes quiet personal reflections without censure, exaggeration, and self-aggrandizement.
The lyrics for “Way Over Yonder” gives us very few details concerning the relationship between the little boy and little girl. First of all, there is no mention of age, although one assumes they are not so “little” that they are incapable of having sex. Second, there is no mention about how this boy got this girl in a “holler” (probably hollow) tree if she is so put off by his ugliness “It’s hard for me to see / how one little boy got so ugly” (“Wilco”). Lastly, any other details about the narrator’s life are conspicuously absent. Besides his leading lots of girls astray with his talent, there is nothing else about who he is, what he does, or even how he feels.
“Way Over Yonder” and the attention surrounding Boyle seem to make the statement that our society is okay with ugly people as long as they have a talent. As Harris puts it, “We thought you were dumpy-looking and therefore not worth our attention, but now that we know you can sing, we think the fact that you’re dumpy-looking is fun” (20). If Boyle was without the ability to sing, it is a likely assumption that the viewers in the audience of Britain’s Got Talent would have felt justified about their scorn and felt no remorse for their mockeries. Boyle would have just been another ugly woman that society felt fine about laughing at because of her physical features. In other words, our society finds nothing wrong with its scorn as long as it feels it is “justified” and the person scorned has no way of retaliating.
Both Boyle and the narrator are confined in society because of their physical unattractiveness. The narrator is fully aware of this quandary for ugly people, for what makes this song so haunting is the utter fixation on which the narrator repeats “Ain’t nobody that can sing like me.” Out of the thirty-three lines in the song, about one-third of them contain “Ain’t nobody that can sing like me.” While this could be taken as boasting in other songs and with other singers, Guthrie and Bragg have filled it with sadness and longing. The narrator knows the only reason anyone gives him attention, female or otherwise, is solely because of his singing talent. Furthermore, whereas this was a boon at one time, he begins to find that it is a burden because of how narrowly it defines him. Taking this idea further, it can be said that he seems to be coming to terms with the fact that no one will love him without knowing this part of him, as in no one can ever love him aside of his singing ability because he is known for his singing. It has become an inerasable part of him, and for the rest of his life it will be “Love me because I sing” and never “Love me just because.”
Boyle is famous and loved as long as she remains a novelty, the “cute pet hobbit.” The narrator does not mention fame, but he is keenly aware that his acceptance and importance depends almost solely on his talent. There are other differences between them: One, the narrator of Guthrie’s song is male, and therefore receives no societal censure for leading lots of girls astray. But as for Boyle, as previously mentioned, she must be virginal and pure for society to continue to support her (at least until she begins to date someone that society has approved). Two, while Guthrie’s narrator could be based on Guthrie on account of the same place of birth and singing talent, the song is about a fictional character. Boyle is very real, and she is continuing her fight to be the winner of Britain’s Got Talent starting the 24th of May when the live semi-finals are aired. Yet both Boyle and the narrator understand what it means to be dissected into parts and weighed for worth in individual pieces. For both of them, there is really no such thing as being judged at face value.
Works Cited
Alarik, Scott. “Robert Burns unplugged.” The Boston Globe. 7 Aug. 2005. 11 May 2009
Blankenship, Mark. “Two Reasons Susan Boyle Means So Much to Us.” Huffington Post. 16 Apr. 2009. 11 May 2009
Britain’s Got Talent 2009. Britain’s Got Talent. ITV. 11 Apr. 2009.
Davies, Caroline, and Paul Kelbie. “Reality TV star Susan Boyle set for duet with idol Elaine Paige.” The Guardian. 19 Apr. 2009. 12 May 2009
Goldman, David P. “Why the West is Boyle’d.” Asian Times Online. 21 Apr. 2009. 11 May 2009
Greenblatt, Leah. “Entertainer of the Month April 2009: Susan Boyle.” Entertainment Weekly 8 May 2009: 17.
Harris, Gillian. “She who laughs last - songstress Susan Boyle.” Times Online. 19 Apr. 2009. The Sunday Times. 11 May 2009
Harris, Mark. “I Dreamed a Dream.” Entertainment Weekly 8 May 2009: 20.
Holmwood, Leigh. “Susan Boyle: a dream come true.” The Guardian. 21 Apr. 2009. 11 May 2009
“Simon Cowell.” IMDb: The Internet Movie Database. 2009. 11 May 2009
“Susan Boyle ‘has been kissed’, neighbour claims.” Telegraph. 21 Apr. 2009. 11 May 2009
“Susan Boyle Speaks Out on Makeover.” Us Magazine. 11 May 2009. 12 May 2009
Wilco, and Billy Bragg. “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key.” Mermaid Avenue. Elektra, 1998.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Getting Head and Blowing People Away: Exaggerated Masculinity in Cave's "Stagger Lee"
The basic plot summary of Cave's "Stagger Lee" could very well have been from a modern day rap song or machismo action movie. Stagger Lee walks into a bar. He uses the word "motherfucker" in some form to describe every male character he meets. He goes on a killing spree; he total body count at the end of the song is three, and one of the slain is the Devil. Stagger Lee shoot the barkeeper first for mouthing off - "Yeah, I've heard your name down the way/And I kick motherfucking asses like you every day." After forcing Billy Dilly to perform oral sex on him - "You better get down on your knees/And suck my dick, because if you don't you're gonna be dead" - Stagger Lee, in a possible act of snuff, shoots him too. "Billy kneels own and slobbers on his head/And Stag fills him full of lead." When the Devil comes to claim Stagger Lee, Lee also shoots him. In the excitement he is also propositioned by a popular prostitute who is so impressed by his masculinity that she offers him her services for free. One of the morals of this song seems to be that being violent will get you women who will give you free sex. The other seems to be that you can shoot your way out of anything, and yet another seems to be that shooting every man that poses a threat to your masculinity is an action that requires four bullets to the head, each.
In Brown's Stagolee Shot Billy, Seale describes Stagolee as a "bad nigger off the block and didn't take shit from nobody"(Brown, Stagolee 214-222). Cave's version of Stagger Lee outlines a new form of the "bad nigger" Stagger Lee/Stagolee/Stack-o-Lee, one with an over-exaggerated masculinity and a penchant for excessive violence. On this, Cave says "I like the way the simple, almost naive traditional murder ballad has gradually become a vehicle that can happily accommodate the most twisted acts of deranged machismo...there seems to be no limits to how evil this song can be" (Brown, "Godfather").
In "Godfather of Gangsta," Cave claims that his "Stagger Lee" is a version of the Stagolee toast he came upon in "a book on urban black folklore." However, in keeping with oral tradition, the article is vague in determining exactly how much of Cave's version is this "original" toast that he read and how much is his own creation. All that Brown presents is that
Cave also gives a nod to another talking blues song with the line "And I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy's asshole." This line was originally from "Two Time Slim" by Snatch and the Poontangs. Those unfamiliar with this peculiar sexually-named band will be more familiar with one of its members, Johnny Otis.
Two Time Slim, the character-singer of the namesake song,could also be one of the many manifestations of Stagger Lee. The song is sung in the first person, and Two Time Slim says lines such as "The drink I like best/is Hydrochloric acid," "Say baby, do you know who I am...I'm the motherfucker who rode zigzag lightning/ down the middle of the Panama Canal," and "I'm the kind of cocksucker/who'll start an uprising in a motherfucker's ass." Cave is nonchalant about Two Time Slim's influence on "Stagger Lee," only remarking on the aforementioned line, "I've always thought that was a groovy line so I just threw it in for good measure" (Brown, "Godfather").
But this simple remark can not only be the answer. Something about "Two Time Slim" must have stuck in Cave's brain to make him remember not only that line but also the song and the character of Two Time Slim, and then make him recall it when reading about Stagger Lee. The two have a lot in common: Stagger Lee says "Mr. Motherfucker do you know who I am...I'm that bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee" and Two Time Slim says "Say baby, do you know who I am...I'm the motherfucker who rode zigzag lightning/down the middle of the Panama Canal." They are not only presenting themselves; they are presenting a "brand name," a persona. This persona constantly needs to inform others of its presence, much like folk songs need to constantly sung and changed to inform society of their presence.
One of the major changes "Stagger Lee" has is the re-creation of Billy Lyons. Billy Lyons becomes "my man Billy Dilly" - something that Stagger Lee demonstrates possession towards from the very start of when Billy is introduced into the song. Here poor Billy Lyons is completely emasculated before he even physically "shows up" in the song; Stagger Lee introduces Billy to the listener by saying "I'll stay here till Billy comes in...and furthermore I'll fuck Billy in his motherfucking ass." Billy Dilly plays no role in the song and Stagger Lee's life besides being a sexual instrument for receiving Stagger Lee's sexual passions (among other things). In fact, the only sentence Billy utters only concerns the infamous Stagger Lee and sings his praise, "You must be/That bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee." This Stagger Lee is all about dominance over others; it is not enough now to shoot someone to get your hat back. Now you must shoot the sassy, exert sexual dominance over both sexes, and remake religion to suit you.
As mentioned before, in Cave's version, the new "bad nigger" is bisexual, or, at the very least, on the "down-low." In pop culture, a man on the "down-low" is a "straight" man who happens to have sex with men ("Lowdown"). While not admitting to be gay, Stagger Lee is. Again, Cave nonchalantly refers to this element in the song as something he found "especially attractive" with no deeper elaboration (Brown, "Godfather"). Yet homosexuality seems natural in this song. In art, music, and literature the gun is often a symbol of the phallus, and the excessive shooting of the gun can be construed as a metaphor for Stagger Lee's sexual repression and frustration (It is arguable that this song could only be improved if Stagger Lee also had sexual relations with the Devil as well before shooting him).
In "Stagger Lee" Seale's idea of the "bad nigger" taking shit from nobody has been taken to an extreme world where Stagger Lee perceives offense from everybody. Cave's Stagger Lee is hostile to every secondary character he meets in the song, even the Devil. This brashness is not punished but is also rewarded by his cheating death and the Devil. Stagger Lee is so "bad" that he is not even dead yet when the Devil comes into the bar and announces to Lee that he's come to take him down (also notice how the Devil has to make a special trip out of Hell to come get Lee). Immune to the Devil's threats, Stagger Lee responds to him only with an action; Lee gives him the same treatment that he gave to the barkeeper and shoots the Devil four times. One gets the feeling that Stagger Lee would probably shoot God too, if God had deigned to come down to punish him instead of the Devil. Furthermore, Stagger Lee seems to have a magic Colt .45, or at least a special one that allows him to fire nine shots (a normal Colt .45 only holds six rounds) without needing to reload.
However, as invincible as this new Stagger Lee seems, he is not immune to the plague that strikes us all: money. Stagger Lee's economic woes are only briefly mentioned in the beginning of the song, but they are mentioned, "It was back in '32 when times were hard/He had a Colt .45 and a deck of cards...He wore rat-drawn shoes and an old Stetson hat/Had a '28 Ford, had payments on that." Here, Stagger Lee is described as a man with little worldly possessions. His shoes are "rat-drawn" and his Stetson hat, so praised and coveted by others in other versions of Stagger Lee, is described in a word: old. Even his car seems faulty; Stagger Lee gets to the bar "The Bucket of Blood" by walking "through the rain" and "through the mud;" what happened to his Ford on which he is still making payments? This Stagger Lee even has real woman troubles "His woman threw him out in the ice and snow/And told him, 'Never ever come back no more'." Therefore, Cave's version of the "bad nigger" Stagger Lee could be read not as the pimp that owned the block (as in other versions mentioned by Brown in Stagolee Shot Billy) but as a man down on his luck who brazenly commits acts of violence because he has nothing left to lose. This "Stagger Lee brand name" he later presents to the barkeeper, Nellie Brown, Billy Dilly, and the Devil is nothing more than a facade, a front of manhood. It is the person a troubled man wants to be.
In her book Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Norah Vincent describes every man has having armor; it is ten sizes too big and he desperately wants you not to notice. Cave's Stagger Lee is this "everyman" Vincent describes. Everything known about him is a construct; the folkloric song itself is merely a construct to explain a series of events that once happened. This construct serves a purpose as a coping mechanism. Besides giving a man the bravado to brave the days when he is poor, unsure, and down on his luck it also gives him the ability to make and find a place for himself within the system in which he lives. Brown argues, "Black manhood is conflicted with the norms of masculinity because the codes 'imply power, control, authority,' which were 'denied to black men since slavery.' " It is optimistic to believe that these issues have since been resolved, and at the least, the events of the recent years have given men more to worry about in terms of their manhood. Cave's re-make of "Stagger Lee" may be one of the newer versions in the folkloric tradition of Stagger Lee, but it holds no less relevance in today's society.
In Brown's Stagolee Shot Billy, Seale describes Stagolee as a "bad nigger off the block and didn't take shit from nobody"(Brown, Stagolee 214-222). Cave's version of Stagger Lee outlines a new form of the "bad nigger" Stagger Lee/Stagolee/Stack-o-Lee, one with an over-exaggerated masculinity and a penchant for excessive violence. On this, Cave says "I like the way the simple, almost naive traditional murder ballad has gradually become a vehicle that can happily accommodate the most twisted acts of deranged machismo...there seems to be no limits to how evil this song can be" (Brown, "Godfather").
In "Godfather of Gangsta," Cave claims that his "Stagger Lee" is a version of the Stagolee toast he came upon in "a book on urban black folklore." However, in keeping with oral tradition, the article is vague in determining exactly how much of Cave's version is this "original" toast that he read and how much is his own creation. All that Brown presents is that
Cave also gives a nod to another talking blues song with the line "And I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy's asshole." This line was originally from "Two Time Slim" by Snatch and the Poontangs. Those unfamiliar with this peculiar sexually-named band will be more familiar with one of its members, Johnny Otis.
Two Time Slim, the character-singer of the namesake song,could also be one of the many manifestations of Stagger Lee. The song is sung in the first person, and Two Time Slim says lines such as "The drink I like best/is Hydrochloric acid," "Say baby, do you know who I am...I'm the motherfucker who rode zigzag lightning/ down the middle of the Panama Canal," and "I'm the kind of cocksucker/who'll start an uprising in a motherfucker's ass." Cave is nonchalant about Two Time Slim's influence on "Stagger Lee," only remarking on the aforementioned line, "I've always thought that was a groovy line so I just threw it in for good measure" (Brown, "Godfather").
But this simple remark can not only be the answer. Something about "Two Time Slim" must have stuck in Cave's brain to make him remember not only that line but also the song and the character of Two Time Slim, and then make him recall it when reading about Stagger Lee. The two have a lot in common: Stagger Lee says "Mr. Motherfucker do you know who I am...I'm that bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee" and Two Time Slim says "Say baby, do you know who I am...I'm the motherfucker who rode zigzag lightning/down the middle of the Panama Canal." They are not only presenting themselves; they are presenting a "brand name," a persona. This persona constantly needs to inform others of its presence, much like folk songs need to constantly sung and changed to inform society of their presence.
One of the major changes "Stagger Lee" has is the re-creation of Billy Lyons. Billy Lyons becomes "my man Billy Dilly" - something that Stagger Lee demonstrates possession towards from the very start of when Billy is introduced into the song. Here poor Billy Lyons is completely emasculated before he even physically "shows up" in the song; Stagger Lee introduces Billy to the listener by saying "I'll stay here till Billy comes in...and furthermore I'll fuck Billy in his motherfucking ass." Billy Dilly plays no role in the song and Stagger Lee's life besides being a sexual instrument for receiving Stagger Lee's sexual passions (among other things). In fact, the only sentence Billy utters only concerns the infamous Stagger Lee and sings his praise, "You must be/That bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee." This Stagger Lee is all about dominance over others; it is not enough now to shoot someone to get your hat back. Now you must shoot the sassy, exert sexual dominance over both sexes, and remake religion to suit you.
As mentioned before, in Cave's version, the new "bad nigger" is bisexual, or, at the very least, on the "down-low." In pop culture, a man on the "down-low" is a "straight" man who happens to have sex with men ("Lowdown"). While not admitting to be gay, Stagger Lee is. Again, Cave nonchalantly refers to this element in the song as something he found "especially attractive" with no deeper elaboration (Brown, "Godfather"). Yet homosexuality seems natural in this song. In art, music, and literature the gun is often a symbol of the phallus, and the excessive shooting of the gun can be construed as a metaphor for Stagger Lee's sexual repression and frustration (It is arguable that this song could only be improved if Stagger Lee also had sexual relations with the Devil as well before shooting him).
In "Stagger Lee" Seale's idea of the "bad nigger" taking shit from nobody has been taken to an extreme world where Stagger Lee perceives offense from everybody. Cave's Stagger Lee is hostile to every secondary character he meets in the song, even the Devil. This brashness is not punished but is also rewarded by his cheating death and the Devil. Stagger Lee is so "bad" that he is not even dead yet when the Devil comes into the bar and announces to Lee that he's come to take him down (also notice how the Devil has to make a special trip out of Hell to come get Lee). Immune to the Devil's threats, Stagger Lee responds to him only with an action; Lee gives him the same treatment that he gave to the barkeeper and shoots the Devil four times. One gets the feeling that Stagger Lee would probably shoot God too, if God had deigned to come down to punish him instead of the Devil. Furthermore, Stagger Lee seems to have a magic Colt .45, or at least a special one that allows him to fire nine shots (a normal Colt .45 only holds six rounds) without needing to reload.
However, as invincible as this new Stagger Lee seems, he is not immune to the plague that strikes us all: money. Stagger Lee's economic woes are only briefly mentioned in the beginning of the song, but they are mentioned, "It was back in '32 when times were hard/He had a Colt .45 and a deck of cards...He wore rat-drawn shoes and an old Stetson hat/Had a '28 Ford, had payments on that." Here, Stagger Lee is described as a man with little worldly possessions. His shoes are "rat-drawn" and his Stetson hat, so praised and coveted by others in other versions of Stagger Lee, is described in a word: old. Even his car seems faulty; Stagger Lee gets to the bar "The Bucket of Blood" by walking "through the rain" and "through the mud;" what happened to his Ford on which he is still making payments? This Stagger Lee even has real woman troubles "His woman threw him out in the ice and snow/And told him, 'Never ever come back no more'." Therefore, Cave's version of the "bad nigger" Stagger Lee could be read not as the pimp that owned the block (as in other versions mentioned by Brown in Stagolee Shot Billy) but as a man down on his luck who brazenly commits acts of violence because he has nothing left to lose. This "Stagger Lee brand name" he later presents to the barkeeper, Nellie Brown, Billy Dilly, and the Devil is nothing more than a facade, a front of manhood. It is the person a troubled man wants to be.
In her book Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Norah Vincent describes every man has having armor; it is ten sizes too big and he desperately wants you not to notice. Cave's Stagger Lee is this "everyman" Vincent describes. Everything known about him is a construct; the folkloric song itself is merely a construct to explain a series of events that once happened. This construct serves a purpose as a coping mechanism. Besides giving a man the bravado to brave the days when he is poor, unsure, and down on his luck it also gives him the ability to make and find a place for himself within the system in which he lives. Brown argues, "Black manhood is conflicted with the norms of masculinity because the codes 'imply power, control, authority,' which were 'denied to black men since slavery.' " It is optimistic to believe that these issues have since been resolved, and at the least, the events of the recent years have given men more to worry about in terms of their manhood. Cave's re-make of "Stagger Lee" may be one of the newer versions in the folkloric tradition of Stagger Lee, but it holds no less relevance in today's society.
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