Cocorosie - Uncaged Tigresses

Aside from where they are appreciated, on sites like Pitchfork, maybe, and of course the few the proud the decent writers, Cocorosie sure get a lot of flak for being themselves. Their new album "Ghosthorse & Stillborn" is a cheeky insta-classic, cute and naughty and simple and bizarre. Why do some hate it so?

I can think of male bands that might justifiably earn similar scorn for being too out there, such as Panda Bear/Animal Collective, Akron/Family, etc., but surely not the rabid hate blogs that Cocorosie get. I'm not going to bother listing all the insults so as to not even mention the names of the losers who write such nasty things. The best most of even the more established writers can say is "you will either love them or hate them."

Hmmm. Can you imagine a rock writer being so dismissive of say, Bob Dylan? Now, say what you want about Dylan--I revere him a God--but his albums tend to ramble on with his nasal sneer of a voice and instrumental arrangements as conventional and uninteresting as the thirteen hundreth time Woody Guthrie uses the same melody to tell a different story... yet no one would dare say "you will love it or hate it." They would say "this is good"-- one is not given the choice of "hating" it.

Whenever something gets a nasty critical backlash it's almost always by a female artist--usually young and attractive--who demands to be taken seriously as they prance around in girlie costumes with toy horses and so forth. They are being "infantile" and need to be slapped, etc. There's no consideration that these regressive accessories have a point beyond the indie boy's ken.

Cocorosie represents just one example, for another I would mention Asia Argento's Scarlet Diva, or LA Ruocco's Xero. A woman artist is expected to be conventional, to focus on her pretty voice, or violin skills, or her ability to evoke the sadness of the Kansas plains...to "speak" to men in a way they want a girlfriend to speak to them, submissive and gorgeous, to not shock and provoke by challenging the male conception of a rock "goddess" as existing for his own exploitative desire and amusement. Cocorosie with their punk haircuts and painted on moustaches, their potty mouths and drag attire challenge what a male indie boy likes about music in the first place.

What would be an equivalent? Hmmm, imagine you are obsessed with Britney Spears, you think you are in love with her, would die for her, if only she could meet you, know the real you... And then she gains 50 pounds, shaves her head, bounces back and forth into rehab... suddenly she's a monster, she has betrayed your love! Well, if you loved her, it wouldn't matter that she gained weight and drug dependencies! Her turning you off shows that you only lusted... that you are pig and not the compassionate male you thought you were. Boom! Slam! Score one for the feminists, like the detective outing the killer at the end of the crime novel. Another example would be the hot girl you been staring at all night at the club, you luck out to bring her home, and she's all drunk and obnoxious and instead of fucking you gets on the phone to her mom and cries and screams for three hours. Hmmmm - is this her fault? You knew she was drunk when you brought her home...instead of placating your desires, she forces you to see them for the empty hormonal drives they are.

I guess my point is these idiots hate Cocorosie because Cocorosie does whatever the hell they want; they are free, and they don't need to dress pretty and strum their acoustic guitars for MTV Unplugged and act all coy and shy around male interviewers. For indie boys it's like realizing they are afraid of tigers. The indie boy has been telling himself he's not afraid of tigers, but the only tigers he's known are in cages. When he sees an uncaged tiger walk up to him, he realizes he's scared. Instantly he clouds his own inadequacy from himself by deriding the tiger. The tiger is a lousy tiger, is all -- a betrayal of tigerhood.

That's crap, brothers. The tiger is free in Cocorosie. You can tell who the free men are out there by their response to the free tiger. I'm not saying you have to love them--they are quirky and not for all tastes--but to hate them makes no sense. Why feel such a need to lash out vindictively at an artist who, after all, is not exactly being shoved down your throat by the popular media? It's called projection; it means you're still dealing with mommy issues, it means it aint about the artist at all -- it's about you!!!

She Spies, I Get Sad

There are a million ways to perceive the world, a million shades

The saddest thing about the sexy spy comedy starring Natasha Henstridge, SHE SPIES, this canceled old network late night TV show now available on DVD, is that it’s so self aware that it becomes lost in itself and still is what it is. For me as its target audience it's devastating to see how refined banality can be. There’s nothing “wrong” with the show per se, but it just leaves itself nowhere to go in its post-modern archness. It also splits viewers between those in and those not in show business. If you are in show business, advertising, television or have ever freelanced in these areas, then you know the bizarre depressing nature of watching TV shows while at work, the steady digital editing and toying, images repeating over and over, facile banter straining for wittiness amongst your trend-hogging colleagues. In this show it seems as if the editors are editing as it goes along, live, and bored.

What saves it is Natasha Henstridge, who has a genuine gift for comedy. She plays it in this loose, fun way like she's a big Groucho Marx fan. She transcends the need for perfect comic timing by sheer not caring. As the star of this show and aware obviously of its zero budget. Actually, the show makes fun of its zero budget in its post-ironic way, but the third time you see a show become hip to its disposability, even that becomes disposable. Then you are in trouble, because fourth wall winks aint been new, modern or relevant since the Weimar era. If the spies were to perform some Brecht, then as Chico Marx would say, you a gotta something.

We all think there is a common reality in which there is no god or there is a god or black people suck or black people are groovy or there is no difference but in fact our own minds can be changed and opened incredibly… if we all followed our own path towards bliss, if we all dropped our guards at once and embraced each other in unconditional love then the world would change instantly for the better.

Great feats should be done because one is thrilled to be discovering their inner potential, the way a kid opens presents at Xmas, or someone discovers there’s a whole other floor to their house they never knew about. That would be a good story, the one where they discover the extra floor in the house for real and someone’s living in it, like Anne Frank.

We all have an Anne Frank in our heads, squirreled away,.

But instead we do our great deeds to… what? win an award? get ourselves noticed by the hot chick or dad? Why do want to get the hot chick? What will she bring us? Will she bring us the admiration of our friends? Will they love us more? Will we explode in ecstasy copulating with such excellent alien DNA? What about dad? Will he ever really think we're adults as long as we keep expecting him to tell us so? Is it for this admiration, or is it that we like the chemicals the brain sends us when we get noticed. Our excellence is its own reward, the system works, admiration begets confidence which begets stronger workers.

I mention this in regards to SHE SPIES for a very simple reason. The show is afraid of excellence, afraid of pushing for relevance and in doing so it collapses under its own irony and disaffection. The only way to succeed in a show like this is to play it absolutely straight... like BATMAN with Adam West, or STAR TREK with William Shatner. Camp can't be made, folks. Camp has to be earned... through earnestness not self-awareness. Sort of like how the French are funny... except when they do comedy. 

Xena and Gabrielle: The Post-Modern Love Story of Our Age

I've been watching the final season of Xena on DVD. By this time the girls were so out of the closet that they were doing everything but kissing or declaring themselves sexual partners. You would have to be the most conservative southerner in the world to not read the writing on the wall. What makes this weird in/out thing so enjoyable is how it solves the dilemma faced by most TV shows that linger over their romantic leads "will they or wont they" status, as in Cheers, X-files, etc. where you have a male and female lead pair bond who you keep waiting to fall in love and into bed. Of course, once the lovers do fall into bed and start kissing on the show, it's repulsive and time for it to end.

This is the nature of our position as infantile viewers that we are grossed out by seeing our onscreen lovers kiss unless it's the end of the film, or disaster and separation is looming right afterwards. With Xena and Gabrielle the lesbian love pair bond is actually strengthened by the lack of exposure. In maintaining their privacy, the girls maintain our interest.

It also forces them to continually find excuses to give each other mouth to mouth resuscitation and employ other nifty gimmicks. A particular favorite is what I call the reverse-double-entendre, wherein declarations of earthly love are then reversed and put in a vague fog so that what you thought they just said and was a moment ago completely and unmistakably a lesbian declaration is now again, obfusciated. In a way it recalls, for me at least, the thrill of realizing your parents are talking about sexual matters in a way you barely comprehend, as they code everything above your ears while you are, say, in the 5th grade. It's a level of adulthood that contrasts wondrously with the less mature elements of the show to create entertainment for the "person who is, in themselves, all ages."

Check my in-depth analysis of Xena Season 3 on popmatters here

Be Fearless: Brick and the Kingpin

The high school nerd gets his just due in this hardboiled noir set in some chillingly remote California suburb. Branden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a loner with glasses who eats lunch by himself near the dumpsters behind the high school. He used to be more social, but druggie Laura (Nora Zehetner) broke his heart. His lonesome blues are over when note in his locker leads him to a remote pay phone where his Laura soon calls, raving about “the pin’s brick” and asking for Branden's help. The only other guy with glasses and a modicum of intelligence in the school is Brain (Matt O'Leary) who lends his aid. Branden runs up the social ladder in search of his girlfriend’s assailants, finding drugs, decadence and deceit all the way. That’s all fine and good in an update on various themes from Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (drug wars with the detective hero pretending to be on both sides; a femme fatale; an uneasy truce with the fall-guy seeking police; expendable patsies, POV beatings, etc.)

In addition to the cleverness of transporting this noir scenario to a high school setting, the choice to play Branden as utterly fearless is utterly awesome. The closest thing to him in film of recent memory is probably Billy, the kid from American Beauty who deals Kevin Spacey his government-grade pot. To overcome fear at that age is no easy feat, but Brandon takes endless beatings, picking fights with hulking football players and drug thugs and winning every time. When his glasses are punched off his face, he merely pulls out a case with another pair, the way Clint Eastwood might pull out a cheroot in a Sergio Leone western.

Along with the amazing, clever dialogue and the great use of geometric composition to establish a sense of suburban desolation at every turn, this is easily the best neo-noir since The Last Seduction and an important step forward in showing young male viewers a protagonist other than the simple minded hunk bore who gets the girl or the coded gay best friend hysteric in the chick flick; the sneering pretty boy; the geeky obese avenger; and so on. Enacted by Gordon-Levitt, Brandon is an inspiring character who should motivate a generation of men and teens to stand up and take their punches like a man, then throw back with everything they have, all in the name of love... baby. Lukas Haas also scores as the drug kingpin. They have some great Sergio Leone-style staring contests.