Life Is But a Dream

[gijoel666]

There was nothing else on my many cable channels that I hadn't seen already, so out of random curiosity, I finally watched Beyonce's self-produced autobiographical documentary.  And I made a discovery... I am a terrible musical snob.  I don't listen to music that bores me, so virtually no R&B and soul; and I don't listen to music that irritates me

Comments

[gijoel666]

Anyway, tho, to address your points.

Yes, I was well aware that I was watching a 90 min personal ad as I watched it. I don't feel like I "bought" anything. I have a *very* sensitive bullshit meter. To take anything the entertainment journals write about any performer as real makes no sense to me, whatsoever. Their job is to keep attention on the performers, whether positive or negative, and that serves two entities' purposes, their "journalistic" employer, and the performer. They have no incentive to publish truth or verified facts; rumors are sufficient, and generally tawdrier. To compound the error of even bothering to read those sources by also reading speculative blogs is not a way to draw a fair judgment of anybody.

I don't hold anyone's efforts to protect their own visual image against them, since everyone does it, no matter how silly it makes them look. *I* do it! -- because current photos make me look even sillier than vanity about them.

I say let me see the person being themselves, and let me make my own judgment based on what I see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. And I have a lot of confidence in my ability to judge character. I've rarely found myself to be wrong about anyone I took the trouble to give a full and fair hearing to, except Obama.

I get that Beyonce made some career choices that sparked animosities and jealousies. But looking at each individual performer, in Destiny's Child and Solange, it's not hard to see that if Beyonce was Daddy's favorite, she earned it, by
demonstrating by far the most individual talent. That's natural, and I can't hold it against her or her parents. Happens
in most families, and it's not wrong for her to be encouraged to pursue the biggest career. It's a competitive industry, and you have to have the talent and the drive to survive the competition; if you don't, you're properly left behind so the star can shine.

to be continued...

[gijoel666]

... I also watched Gaga's Monster Ball at MSG concert film, more than once. What I found was that only about the last five minutes was her being a musician, doing the best she is capable of, when she reprised "Born This Way" a capella in the dressing room. And I listened to all the songs, in both movies, and what I realized was that the difference between these
two artists is that Beyonce's songs would still have appeal for me on the radio, without the megaproduced stage production numbers, while Gaga's songs make me gag, and *are* useless on the radio, in spite of her having enough of a following to mask that fact within the industry. That's an important distinction, because music is fundamentally, primarily, a sound medium. I don't find Gaga's artistry the least bit genuine, anymore. It was, when she was still performing under her born name in Brooklyn bars. Now, she has "Born This Way" as her musical "message", and has nothing else to say in the rest of her songs, but reserves the repetition of the "Born This Way" message for endless speechifying, between songs. And she's every bit as controlling of the "art" she puts out as Beyonce is, but she shifted her focus to controlling the video and not giving a crap about the quality of the audio. There were enough "candid moments" in Gaga's film for me to find her far less honest, and far less likable than Beyonce. She burst on the scene with an innovative sound and an excellent societally relevant lyric, in "Paparazzi", which I initially assumed she meant to be an ironic lament. But everything she's done since has made that song appear thoroughly hypocritical, she just wants to be seen constantly, and whether she's actually heard has become at best secondary. And that annoys and disappoints me because she had already proven she's capable of so much better. She chose to devolve into pure commercial branding instead. Her brand is *different* from Beyonce's, but it is neither more nor less fabricated or honest.

I also would question the criticism of Beyonce's "put a ring on it" line. I never heard that as meant to be taken literally, the ring is not a symbol of materialism, she's not saying women should get paid off for putting out, or that marriage is the ultimate goal of all women and relationships; rather, it's a metaphor for demanding respect from the man, and having self-respect as the woman, and for the guy being decisive about what he wants. A guy who could not commit to her after a three-year relationship has no right to be jealous when she looks elsewhere, because he made her feel like she wasted that time. OTOH, women are not merely socially programmed to want families, eventually; they're still hormonally programmed toward that as well. If it's nature, I don't have a problem with acknowledging it. Seen in another light, she's not encouraging conventionalism as much as she's telling women it's okay (not shameful) for *them* to play the field more, because that increases their chance of finding the mate who will show them the respect of a commitment. Does this suggest a double standard? No, it *recognizes* that women *are* inclined to commit to a relationship faster than men are, but that can be evened out with effort. It's not preaching so much as it is accepting of nature, and empowering women to act in ways that will allow them to feel better about themselves, and nudging men to take more responsibility for relationships. Also, it's okay for a song to be aimed at a subset of the population, there's no reason to assume Beyonce thinks every woman needs to act in furtherance of starting a family. She's just talking to the subset that is already inclined in that direction. And she has other songs with other messages for other subsets of the audience.