I went to see the Dan Band last night (it was roomie’s birthday and they are funny) and there was a brief moment when it became problematic.
When I use the word problematic I’m using it in my ex-academic brown girl/UCLA activist kind of way. What this means is that one or more of the following triggers was pushed: race, class, gender, sexuality. My brain doesn’t necessarily go there all the time (you gotta choose your battles) but sometimes something pushes the buttons.
The lame-ass opening act Waiting Game already had me at a slow simmer when, because we all hated them, they forced a young woman to bare her breasts onstage to distract everyone from how fucking craptacular they were.
And when the Dan Band came on, I was enjoying it. They were funny – they’re like that wedding cover band that already seems to be drunk, so you either go with it or you hang out in the lounge and wait for them to be over. So I went with it. The Dan Band sings girl songs: Shoop, Whatta Man, No More Drama, Genie in a Bottle, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Get your Freak On, Nasty, Tyrone, Milkshake. Generally it’s like a huge frat party.
Not being a fan of the frat party I sort of detached. The crowd was into it, though: those there for the nostalgia factor of 80s songs and the frat kids there for the beery, accelerated, fun of three white guys doing bad choreography onstage to girl karaoke. I can appreciate that – his version of ‘Genie in a Bottle’? Fucking funny.
But there was a point when I thought, This is a moment of white male appropriation of the female voice (especially the black female voice) at its best. For example, Badu’s ‘Tyrone’ is so good because every black woman recognizes it as a song of empowerment; the black woman tells the truth, draws the line, asserts her power and that last line – ‘but you can’t use my phone.’ – this is the payoff. This is the knockout, the Amen moment. But take that song, strip it of context, speed it up, put flashing lights behind it and get the Dan Band to cover it for a bunch of kids and suburbanites who don’t get it, then it’s stripped of anything vital and just becomes another thing for a consumerist privileged audience.
(see, i'm rereading what i just wrote and i'm thinking, oh some folks aren't gonna get this and just think i pick on everything...maybe i should tone it down...maybe i'm thinking too hard about the dan band...they're just a fun band...maybe i should lay off for a bit...maybe i'm sounding too militant...
but no. i'm letting it stand.)
7 comments:
You know, this reminds me of something Mr. B. said about frat drag once. We were talking about drag, and why is it that frat boys *love* drag, is it really just repressed homoeroticism, blah blah, and suddenly Mr. B. said, "omg, I just realized something. When they do drag, they're doing it to *make fun of women.* That's why it's supposed to be funny, why they often make themselves look as ridiculous as possible. It's not about homoeroticism, it's about deep misogyny."
And I think he's right.
I just want to say, as a reader, please don't worry even for a moment if anyone "gets" it, or if it comes across as too much, too militant, too..... this is your blog. If one of us doesn't like it, we don't have to read it. You get to express yourself however you like about whatever you like.
The Dan Band is basically glorified karaoke, of which the sociolpolitics are not widely known to the uninitiated. The charm of drunk american karaoke is that it's not about the signing, it's not about the song; it's all about the auto-minstralization of the person at the mic. One of the worst WORST party killers at karaoke night is when someone selects a song for himself/herself to sing because s/he likes and or believes in the song chosen. We call that person a 'believer'.
(There are many other characters we hate at karaoke night besides the 'beliver.' There's the 'star searcher' who practices his Whitney Houston song all week in the shower and then shows up at the bar by himself, all nervous, and sounds like an American Idol contestant. There's the 'lullabye,' which is basically a 'believer' who chooses a slow song. 'The Bitch' is always pouting because it's not his turn to sing yet. And then there's the 'Sorority Girls' (aka 'Safety In Numbers)who invariably go up in groups of three or more and hold the microphone at an equidistance among them, insuring that no one can be heard. Often the Sorority Girls talk about how awful they are rather than sing. You've seen all of these people.)
Anyway, you are correct in lamenting the co-opting of "Call Tyrone" for the purposes of bourgeoise delight, and it is a shame that the message of empowerment was lost on the decadent suburban audience. But in this case, I find the audience to be the problematic element, not necessarily the performer. We have to start holding people responsible for their ignorant misperceptions, rather than sheltering them from messages they don't understand.
Finally, in frat-boy cross-dressing, I'd like to note that repressed homoeroticism and misogyny go hand-in-hand; they are not mutually exclusive. You cannot underestimate the degree of fucked-up that is the socio-emotional health of the frat boy. Misogyny and homoeroticism are at the limits which define frat-boy identity.
Don't forget: the only identity that teen and twenty-something white americans ever have to question is their sexual idenity (as their ethnic and class identity are absolutely taken as a presumption); of course, we all know that this culture has been sexualizing them since childhood, so if they're straight it doesn't require a lot of soul searching.
No, the frat-guy's identity crisis will hit him at mid-life, when suddenly he realizes that the identity which has been handed to him on a plate for all of his life is terribly inappropriate. And that's why he cheats on his wife and starts buying surrogate penises.
See? Frat guys are easy.
REMEMBER: Hold the AUDIENCE responsible for their own ignorant misperceptions.
jp, you win the new year's eve contest.
I win I win I win!
What's the new year's eve contest?
I just saw the dan band on last call.
They sing songs by women. Five years ago, in this culture, a popular act would have had to 'gay it up' to pull off an act like this. Fifteen years ago, singing a song from a woman's point of view would have been totally out of the question.
The culture is changing.
you're right, the culture is changing. my gay friend M- mentioned how weird it was seeing straight men unabashedly singing along to a girly power ballad. he thought only gay men did that.
and i'm not saying the dan band is awful. i still say they're hilarious. but if you wanted to look at how the dan band (and their interaction with their audience) tweaks and conforms to codes of race and gender, one can do that, too.
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