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Wednesday, January 11, 2006
LITTLE GIRL SHOES
Smog
Ex-Con (1997 single, o.o.p)
currently available on Accumulation: None
Drag City : 2002
[Buy It]
LITTLE BOYS
Devendra Banhart
Cripple Crow
XL / Beggars : 2005
[Buy It]
(DO YOU WANNA) COME WALK WITH ME?
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Ballad of Broken Seas
V2 : 2006
[Pre-Order It]
After several weeks of esoteric raving, I've returned to good ol' mother earth to post some stuff about music that isn't coded and freaky. Well, not coded anyway, today's post actually is pretty freaky, aligned around the theme of SONGS THAT I THINK ARE PRETTY DAMN DECENT BUT WHICH ACTUALLY MAKE ME PRETTY UNCOMFORTABLE BECAUSE THEY HAVE WEIRD KIDDIE FETISHES AND I'M LIKE WAIT, WHAT AM I LISTENING TO?
First, let's look at the lyrics to Smog's "Little Girl Shoes", so we're all clear on what we're hearing:
Your little girl shoes
I was attracted to your
Little girl shoes
I was distracted by your
Little girl ways
And that little boy hat
Did you have to wear that
In combination with those
Little girl shoes
Dismantled in the lab
Your shoe is cold leather
Your foot is beastly calloused
Closer to cloven
But...paw plus shoe
Equals I don't know what to do
And does the girl imitate the woman
Or the woman imitate the girl
Your little girl shoes
Kick the dust right out of me
Your little girl shoes
Kicked the dust right out of me
Your little girl shoes
Kicked the dust right out of me
Whoa. That shit is pretty clear-cut, and raises about a million questions I'm unable to answer. Such as: Does he mean it, or is he appropriating a voice? Does it matter? Can good people make morally unsound art and still be good people? And if an utter villain creates a piece of art that I admire, do I become complicit in villainy? Does art even have an obligation to be moral? Is J.C. right ("The avant-garde need not be moral")? Is the other J.C. right ("The avant-garde is ideologically unsound, Charlotte, you need the razor to have Marat")? What about the other other J.C. ("Parents, honor your children etc.")? When dudes sing about digging little girls, should I become irate? If I'd ever actually been molested in any way myself, would I? What about you? When sly white boys with broken four-tracks make transgressive statements, do you tend to view it as some sort of social commentary or satire? But when the Ying Yang Twins whisper about "beating that pussy up", do you take it as literal and toxic? If so, does that make you a racist? When Banhart sings "I see so many little boys I want to marry / I see plenty little kids I've yet to have," should we assume he's a pedophile, even though conflating the art and the artist is a huge fallacy? But so even if it's a fallacy, I mean, does that just make saying whatever cool? Even if you don't mean it? I mean of course saying whatever is cool b/c we don't want to be prudes or facists, but does that mean we just have to open wide and swallow whatever? Do we take Lanegan's "little girl" literally, or as an affectionate figure of speech, and if it's the latter, are we offended by this child-sexualizing figure of speech? If we're offended, is our moral outrage self-serving or deeply felt? And is it mitigated by the undeniable loveliness of images like "There's a crimson bird flying when I go down on you?"
etc etc etcLabels: brian
posted by Brian
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