Smearing shit in a pretty girl's face: The debasement of women in pop

In general I'd say that everyone likes to see their betters put back in their place, be it by smearing shit in their face or otherwise. It's unrelated to misogyny in that the hostility comes not from problems of gender, but from a deeper need for people to get knocked down a few pegs.

this kind of creepiness may well be in the work of some antediluvian, heartless "auteurs" (ALL of Eyes Wide Shut, for instance) but in what way does Kylie get her face smeared?

From what I recall of the video, Kylie gets knocked in the head by a rock from Nick and is left for dead. "All beauty must die..." blah blah whatever.

not quite the same as the venomous misogyny in the hitch quote, though is it? more like Cave = credibility for Kylie, Kylie = sales for Cave, plus a bit of a joke for both. All quite good humoured really.

A more fruitful line of investigation might be attitudes towards female pop *fans*....

pre 1975, maybe... the gainsbourg / whitney thing is just him being a twat, nothing intriguing, can image Li*m G*llagher doing the same thing really. Hitch = well documented creep from class of 1935. When anti-semitism was a popular parlour game among the upper classes.

what about sublimated desire in women to humiliate pretty men? I have often been the victim of this loathsome trend. So I explain my many failures, anyway ;-)

Hmm.. I've never thought about that one Pete. I do hope you're right. It would give my failings a more noble gloss. Can any women attest to the truth of this? I suppose if it's a sublimated desire they might not be able to.

OK, any women who have been through a course of psychoanalysis, then...

Nick: yes, I'm sure that is the reason for your failings.

The tendency you started out with rings a *bit* of a bell, but it's so... diffuse, the way you presented it; your examples were pretty far and wide. If I understand what you're saying rightly, then I think it is ANYTHING BUT intriguing - it's simply appalling. But I should tone down my condemnation of this phenomenon until I'm sure that there really is a phenomenon to condemn.

I don't *quite* see what Tom E is getting at. I think he is a little bit wider of the mark, or further off the point, than you on this one.

You're right, pf. It's a very sketchily formed, open ended question, because I haven't really thought it through. I was just hoping that someone else might have done. I don't know what Tom was getting at, either. Was he just talking about groupie abuse? Fuck the groupies, I say. If the appeal is non gender-specific, as Jimmy said, then I wonder if we've been kidding ourselves about it being a peculiarly British thing to want to knock people off their pedestals. I'm reminded of that great (and yes, unashamedly ironic) line in a 'Singer's Hampstead Home' by Microdisney, "The Americans are really great / They don't resent success"

More likely, he's talking about attitudes such as those displayed by Chris Herbert in the indie kids: response thread.

"Herr Director" surely Nick.

I was simply suggesting that given that the original qn was being generally described as either too specific or pertaining to a situation which doesn't exist any more, widening the scope to include the general positioning of female fans within the rock discourse might be interesting. But probably in another thread actually.

To specifically answer the question - post-divorce ABBA?

"Herr Director" surely Nick.

Oops. It seems I have to make one mistake a day on ILM.

I think the rapturous reception Mr. Herbert's posts received and a number of other posts on the board (particularly the Courtney Love thread)have made ILM not exactly misogynistic, but not exactly female friendly either.

1. Ooops - I haven't seen this Herbert character. Been away too long.

2. Tom: now I have even *less* idea what you're on about.

3. Almost everything I have posted today* has criticized or disagreed with Tom Ewing. This is purely accidental. I still think he's wonderful and everything.

[* this includes e-mails to my boss and colleagues at work]

Re: Herbert, yo, some chick comes on going "indie boys don't like music, they only like records which look nice on the wall while they play vintage Atari games. It's hard-up no-action boys who listen to shit music like riot grrrl. I wear checkered pants to get them in the sack," and I'm all about that chick, even though checkered pants are awful. But then I'd probably put on the Stooges - "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell" and my point would be lost.

Stooges - "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell" Thanks Otis, I think that was lurking somewhere in the back of my mind. As was 'Pretty Girls Make Graves'.

tangent: 'In The Back Of My Mind' ties with 'Let Him Run Wild' as the best Beach Boys song not on the box set.

"let him run wild," as you likely know, nick, was left off at brian's insistence (though, he then went and re-recorded it for imagination. go figure). i can only imagine "in the back of my mind" was left off so they didn't have almost the entire today! album on there.

the best song not on the box set, however, is "the lonely sea" and i have NO idea why it's not on there. also close are the ones you mentioned plus "your summer dream," "keep your eye on summer," and "never learn not to love" which is a HOOT.

to keep this on topic, i'd have a hard time actually smearing shit on someone's face because that would mean i'd have to PICK UP a piece of shit and hold it in my hand. glove or not, that's pretty disgusting.

What box set?

Blimey, I knew this thread ranged far and wide, but it's all over the place now.

Good point, Fred. I suppose you could push her head down onto the floor and rub her face in it. Would that count as smearing? I like to think so.

Re: Herbert, yo, some chick comes on going "indie boys don't like music, they only like records which look nice on the wall while they play vintage Atari games. It's hard-up no-action boys who listen to shit music like riot grrrl. I wear checkered pants to get them in the sack," and I'm all about that chick, even though checkered pants are awful.

Yeah, but on the other hand there aren't any threads that are about what a whore Elliot Smith is, or how Steve Malkmus thinks he's so great and "needs to be taught a lesson" (though I have to admit both would be pretty funny). There's been a pretty consistent reinforcement of women being sluts or how they shouldn't be getting ideas above their station.

nick, that would require some work. first off, you'd have to locate the shit or, God help you, make some and then get her to rub her face in it. so this should, obviously, be a woman a lot smaller than yourself.

ultimately, i think this is closer in spirit to what hitchcock was saying as he phrased it, "would you love to smear her face in shit?" rather than "...smear shit on her face?" kudos to you.

I'm starting to think the whole Hitchcock quote was a figment of my deranged imagination. Has anyone else ever heard it? I think it was on a documentary I watched years ago. Ah well, dead men can't sue for defamation.

Do you have any idea what kind of people we're going to get from search engines on this thread?

Nick: It's certainly something Hitchcock could have said (nasty little sonofabitch), but remember that he had a very particular fetish when it came to women. There was some sort of quote (it may have been from Hitchcock/Truffeaut) that was along the lines of, 'he liked blondes and legs and English girls because, as he said, 'she could be with you in the back of a lorry checking her makeup with one hand and feeling you up with the other.'' I'm paraphrasing like crazy...

Do you have any idea what kind of people we're going to get from search engines on this thread?

Probably the audience it deserves, given the attitudes on display.

Who cares... the worst people already contribute. : )

I'm once again getting a tad lost here. 'The attitudes on display'? Like I said, I think that the kind of think ND is on about is appalling. I think he thinks so too, though at one point he hinted that he thought it was intriguing. But I think he really thinks it's appalling. I do anyway.

I really didn't understand that bit about Ataris and sticking things on walls and stuff. Was it a quotation from someone?

Like I said, lost. 'Lost' was a great Morrissey B-side (November 1997).

I only looked at this thread because the title was so intriguing. What the hell are you all on about?

Did Hitchcock's attitudes come out the way they've been expressed here on film? I'm under the impression that they didn't. The phenomenon of sublimation is what might make it interesting, if it is at all.

An attempt to humiliate someone is an act of self-disclosure. I don't think an artist who is in control of his/her work would have misogyny expressed within a work to make a statement against women. It would only make him/her seem vile. (This was the difficulty with the thread on cruelty in pop songs.)

'Pretty Girls Make Graves' doesn't seem particularly misogynistic to me. The focus is not on the girls in the first place. The song only seems to challenge traditional ideals about feminine virtue, but I don't think the girls come out looking bad for all that. Just intimidating.

The main character in Naked could be considered misogynistic. And I think the film has interesting things to say, i.e. about the roles that women occupy. He (Mike Leigh) might have been saying that the roles are created by men, or at least around men.

Big question, Nick. There's any number of explicitly demeaning videos, revolting at all levels. But also those whose use of sexuality does not necc. reduce to any sort of simple "objectification" and the distinction must always be drawn between an attitude to any particular person, and the generalization of that attitude. To attack *a* woman for certain reasons is not always to attack *all* women. So, uh, this phenom. does exist in pop because it does exist in society. But I wouldn't place it at the root of pop anymore than assert that is the basis for society, or for even the aesthetic life of society. Dialogized pop where mysogeny figures is, on the other hand, fairly interesting. Because such attitudes must be represented (if even obliquely) if pop is to address the entire span of society -- the question is what fashion they are approached in. Cf. that terrible video with the band walking over the body of the giant supermodel, Mystikal's "Shake Your Ass" video, some recent works by the terrible pop-punk crowd, and et. cet. Related point: there is a dynamic which is not precisely virgin/whore but rather iconic/demeaned, which seems to be applied to women in a range of pop-cult. And this particular dynamic rests, if not on out-and-out objectification, at least on a certain reduction of agency, casting women more as props than protagonists. Eh?

I think, Nick, that you may have misread Hitchie's intent. You talk about the "sublimated desire to humiliate beautiful women," but your anecdote describes the woman as immaculately dressed and made up, very sure of her looks--in other words, looking quite prissy. I don't think Hitchcock's statement was meant to be overtly misogynistic. It's sort of like when you see a yuppie looking all smug in his three-piece suit and Lexus, you think: "Man, I'd love to throw mud all over that guy, the prissy prick." Granted, the same sentiment can "mean" different things depending on whom it's directed toward, but I think this thread has gone a bit too far with the uninteresting--i.e. gender-political--possibility that this question created, and has left unexplored the more interesting question: isn't it strange to feel the urge to ruin perfection?

"Did Hitchcock's attitudes come out the way they've been expressed here on film?"

If you mean, does he get a buzz out of seeing Ice-Cold Her all mussed up and heaving and (preferably) screaming, ans = yes. He loved it. (So did 'we', which is why he's still a Classic... )

(But you weren't allowed to scope actual-seeming shit in Hollywood before Pretty Flamingos, obviously... )

I don't think there's a direct equiv. in pop: closest that instantly springs to mind is Phil on Ronnie Spector. But the control-dynamic of singer vs producer and actress vs director is almost always totally different. In the era of rock, the matter at hand is Self-Debasement, and that's not gendered.

(Eminem et al: the girl abused only figures in his voice, the judgment comes back on/to him...)

Tho actually: Moroder on Donna Summer, gay-pop maestro vs prissy Christian? She went thru a Linda-Lovelace-like phase of saying, "I wasn't happy," didn't she? (Tho not forced, as LL may have been, or deliberately humiliated, as some Hitch heroines...)

Rock and post-rock pop: part of the drama that's special to it is the possibility-difficulty of autonomy (from industry, from audience). That's just not the case in movies, where actors still can be crated like cattle.

Pretty Flamingos = Pink Flamingos