Liz Phair defends Lana Del Rey
Let me break it down for you: she’s writing herself into existence. She’s giving herself a part to play because, God knows, no one else will and she wants to matter in this life. As far as I can tell, it’s working. I went straight to iTunes and bought her new release “Born To Die” in toto (how often do I do that??) because it was more than a collection of songs or a performance, it was a phenomenon. Maybe all the more so because she’s not overwhelmingly talented. The minute I hear the whisperings of “how dare she,” I’m interested. I don’t have to like it, it doesn’t have to be worthy.
(PS - I think it’s awesome that Rolling Stone posted a link to this op-ed and said “We would have loved to run this piece, but, instead, we’ll settle for recommending it.” Class act.)
I have to admit to avoiding anything media-wise about Lana because it’s all been negative and I don’t want another thing to hate in this world right now. Like, I’m full up with anti-choicers and racists and sexists, and homophobes and REPUBLICANS and the rest of it. But Liz made me realize that I don’t do enough supporting women for women’s sake. Like what IF the world was run by women? If every president was a woman, and 85% of congress and all but two of the Fortune 500 CEOs, what if film scholars wrote about the female gaze and most stories were about women, and there were only a few male characters even in most of them - especially the most fun ones. And any book or movie or TV show that had mostly men would be called a ‘dick flick’ and women wouldn’t be expected to watch them or know anything about them, except make cruel jokes about how much they suck and no one takes them seriously anyway.
Seriously, in a world where Nickleback and Creed are platinum artists, there isn’t room for Lana Del Rey? Maybe all women everywhere just get a pass from me for a while. And when the world looks a little less like it does now and a little more like the one I just described, I’ll get back to the judging.
-
nomadmanifesto liked this
-
surelyisadream reblogged this from distractedbyshinyobjects
-
distractedbyshinyobjects posted this
