I'm loving it. (Part three--Regions, Successful Compositions)

The second season of Jersey Shore will premiere any minute now (next week?). It's passage, from odd, low-budget, themed, Real World-modeled house&party show to straight-up phenomenology, has been a pleasure and a surprise. And that "phenomenology" is both the same and different. Like, it was a "meme" and Twitter accounts and paid party appearances and makeovers in magazines, but also, really REAL and HAPPY. That's the cast. The cast is full of friendship. (Also, they are dancers.)
Critically, I'm not coming from a place of mistrust-of or disrespect-for reality programming. It is the lion's share of what I watch, and as I don't believe there is such a thing as "guilty pleasure," I take its actors and creators v. seriously. I'm used to fame-for-fame's sake. I've written here before about Paris Hilton's genius, por ejemplo. There is something so wholesome and enlightening about her (and Kim Kardashian's) work ethic (pushing those perfume portfolios on at least three Continents). It's nuts to me (to me) that folks still portion out "real celebrities" and "fake celebrities," like movie actors and the movies aren't a big WHATEVER right now (except for Zac Efron, Twilight and cartoons). Anyway, Snookie, Pauly, JWoWW, Mike, Ronnie, Sammy, and Vinny are, among those who make a living appearing as themselves, sort of special. Just especially candid, nervy, but nice.

I have previously (privately, publicly) decried the rise of shamelessness in American (Youth) culture. There is something dangerous in the group-mind habituation of "bad boy and girl behavior," or the obsessive uptake and reuptake of avatars. But perhaps, there are two forms of such: "shamelessness" and "unashamedness." Like, "shamelessness" is hubristic and unstable, over-delusional and sort of line-stepping (disruptive). But "unashamedness" is simply a way of not being burdened by self-doubt, of being brave and transparent and CELEBRATORY. I don't know. Advocating shame doesn't sound quite right to me. Personally, I'm mortified by (the prospect of my own) self-promotion (though I don't lack in self-absorption). And I am beginning to think of it as a personal failure, a kind of parochially educated cross to bear (that drives me offside). Self-promotion and Unashamedness are (here we go) essentially American manners, processes. Americans know how to think themselves blessed, how to be certain about their own rectitude or beauty or anything without much angst, like the 'dumb' and 'ease' mentioned in the last part. The Jersey Shore cast derives their glamour and likability from straightforward, unashamed realness, from confidence in their estilo, their avatars (which are like surface souls? wishes and dreams for the self made semi-material?), their paths to success (their belief in the very fact of success...).
Then the clever duality of/in Jersey Shore is like this: the broadcast of the self, like a product, a brand, an idea is a piece of our New World, our Web and stuff (the patriotic eating of television commercials, celebration of Better Brands), while the regionalism, the extreme, charming specificity of this group of Eastern Seaboarders is a piece of our Old New World.

As a Southerner, I have witnessed the slippage of Regional styles (no one talks quite like people's grandmothers anymore, unfortunately), and felt the need to keep whatever of the old, local stuff I could (if only by remembering how some forebears looked and sounded). To 'keep' The Region feels imperative for us now. We must 'keep' a balance between the Universalized and mega- (which, as I've outlined in the first part, are important and embraceable) and the local, regional, personal, small. America must have everything she wants, both ways---down-home and Global (even, Space-y).
Petrova started the conversation (at home, not en blogsite) some months ago about Jersey Shore's success as a regional program, and about her desire for endless, continual regional programming. Shows about everybody, everywhere, ourselves included--as in, "I wonder what's going on in ____ right now..."--And then I was like, "OH WAIT, that's what Youtube was supposed to be about! Right?"

So, I'm loving this exchange of local and super-Global objects and ideas, like the Coors commercials of the first part: from The stylized Rockies to your market, proud, shining, fast, loving, self-loving, lucky (blessed), happy, just a little careless but somehow steady, unashamed. The ads thrive on a benign tension; they are general and specific at once, contradicting themselves so contradicting themselves.

********************

I hate to indulge her attention-trix-ery, but Lady Gaga persists (demands post and repost).
There's this Japanese television interview I found from last summer.....

The way she looks.
But also, the oblique straining toward an Asian audience (as interpreted by an American private schoolgirl)-------all the talk of piano lessons!!!
There's also this embarrassing 106 & Park appearance from the same season, where all reference points are for black audiences-----I worked with Kanye, Jay-Z, "You all must love Beyonce!"

She is reshuffling her product line for this demographic, then that demographic. And she has been successful, has achieved cross-demographic appeal. But how kinda ugly when you stop and pay attention, set one appearance beside another. It's sheisty, condescending, very suit...not (keeping it) REAL.
Gaga is, like any of us 80s babies, a student of The Brand, The Market, The Branding and Marketing. But I feel like the great branding work is in the universal, the image, the sound (the humanity!) that crosses borders without losing its home-country, its regional identity...not this thin maneuvering and shapeshifting...? Right? Gaga comes by her false and uncomfortable regionalism honestly...Manhattan [as opposed to the other 4 boroughs], her homestead, hasn't been a region for some time---what with the turning out of the lower and middle classes, the strict, to-the-letter Capitalism that has no sympathy for history, no sentiment, that tolerates fakes and users, anybody with cabbage...maybe I just hate the theater, butI thought it was worth mentioning that working on this essay has helped me to understand my ultimate resistance to/with Gaga, whose voice and hooks I like so much (because of their glitzy emotionality), who I find endearing as a worker in the way of aforementioned Paris and Kim. She is an overnight icon of "our New World, our Web and stuff (the patriotic eating of television commercials, celebration of Better Brands)," but she pointedly eschews the other half, the realness, our Old New World. There is all kinds of consternating bluster about growing up in "The Upper West Side Arts and Culture District" (pardon?) and being a "dirty L.E.S. Artiste" (barf and bull-----a Dad-subsidized apt. [not that I have a problem with that] above Max Fish is not the look she meant to look for, or meant for us to see) and how "New York" the middle finger is (lol whatever) and how she has been in straight-up Madonna costume all summer. Her regional identity, and, in turn, her whole identity, is stuffed to the gills with affect, because she came from post-'86 Manhattan, the island of affect, of neighborhoods and ways of life dictated by real estate agents and club promoters, defectors from home (the Middle and South), people who often hate (out loud) their native regional identities. Though of course, until two minutes ago, Gaga--née Stefanie Germanotta--was doing something brilliantly regional. She was a guidette (a total compatriot of the Jersey Shore cast). But self-conscious about it. Because Manhattan, unlike Staten Island or Jersey (where most of that cast is from), is full of that affect that must needs degrade the outer-boroughs and regional identities, The Bridge and Tunnel (with callous inattention to the class repercussions of such narrowness and dismissiveness). The second Miss Germanotta saw the way to shed her (perceived unsophisticated) regional self, to become a costumed non-citizen (a "true" Manhattanite), she did, and HOW. So, I see her and I say, "Where's Stephanie?" And The Brand is incomplete, unfinished. It's not a good commercial.

Sponsors

One day [NOT TODAY], I'm going to stop reading blogs I hate and getting upset about them and then posting sort-of rejoinders here.

And I hardly read New York's 'The Cut,' because this girl I went to high school with writes for them sometimes and I don't trust her. I don't trust most fashion journalists. I love Guy Trebay; he's from my Pop's generation of Village Voice staff, and he isn't narrow or mean. He might be a hippie......I loved Liz Tilberis a lot. I used to like The Sartorialist, but he's gotten boring and narrow, never mean, but certainly packing limitations (and also success). The worst thing I find about most fashion journalism is its smallness, its party line. There seem to me to be infinite solutions for dressing, globally, through eons and eons, etc.---and it's the infinity that's interesting and meet.

So this post on The Cut by Amy Odell (who did not attend any of my three high schools) really bothered me, not only because of its damning industry narrowness, but also because it contains examples of that tackytacky watching-Jersey-Shore-ironically "meme" (kinna hurra). Here is a picture of Amy Odell. I don't want to get too snipey with it, but the glimpse is telling. Isn't she like any other girl who showers regularly and talks about shopping? Yes, seems to be. Boxford, Massachusetts, the finer suburbs of Cincinnati. You know? And Odell is shocked (shocked) to find that folks might actually think Jersey Shore's Snooki is es-stylish...gosh...this is a lot for me because Snooki is a genius (so are J-Woww and Pauly D and Vinny's mother). And doing stuff, watching stuff, buying stuff 'ironically' is essentially the worst thing ever. I've gotten wrapped up in Jersey Shore because it's a good show, because it's about dancers, glamorous dancers, men and women peacocking and dancing, really dancing, fighting the beat, vibing, vibing, creeping, cooking food, working at the t-shirt stand on the boardwalk. Yes it's narrow—gym and tan and laundry all the time—but the cast don't purport to be observer-reporters of fashion in total; they're just doing them, just them.

Narrowness and openness are elements of style in equal parts, to oversimplify it: one can be relatively or extremely (depending on preference of the individual) narrow about one's own appearance (an overabundance of openness toward self-style is like not knowing the self, which is no bueno past a certain age [kids ought to shop around]) and open about everybody else's (because nothing is more stylish than a good, loving attitude). Granted, I don't think everybody everywhere is stylish all the time. Clearly I'm not open to the way Amy Odell looks, because she looks like 'floating, common fashion staff' and that's flimsy to me. The only limit I hold, the only limit to my openness about other people dressing, is nativity, whether it be absolutely geographical or a bit more conceptual, I like people to be themselves from the "places" they are from, unabashedly. I like clothes to discuss identity (more than attendance to industry directives), and I find a kind of Manhattan (or L.A.)-bound uniform, rootless in a bad way, and bland. It's never the individual garments, a pair of skinny jeans or a nice blazer or a particular watch, it's their combination (I have seen Korean girls pull off conservative luxe brilliantly, because there is a pinch of avant-garde in each item and you usually can't tell the brands, and the French too can do this sort of look, but without washing or ironing too much....I suppose it fails in America because when one ought to be wearing wonderful freckled, preppy American sportswear but instead gets derailed attempting to be [sweet Jesus] 'edgy' with dumb brass and gold studs on everything it tanks....it's like actresses....it's down to actresses and how they're always on the covers of things). I'm bad at philosophy.

Back to Odell's actual post--
It's titled "Snooki Plugs Ugg, Bebe, Other Scary Labels."
What is Amy Odell afraid of? What does she want us to fear? Fear is the enemy of art (and bowels). Doesn't she know that?

I don't get so carried away with Ugg ugliness. I never wore them in their hey; I thought they were overpriced. This fall/winter I've bought a whole stable of knock-off Uggs available for purchase down the street from us at Bobby's for $5. So has Pillow. I wear them to take out the garbage and run errands and a couple of times to work (though I felt pretty guilty afterward for being so collegiate). They're slippers, which I love, and soft and warm and nowadays fantastically ubiquitous (I don't think they mean anything). They are simple, like espadrilles or muck-lucks. I just don't think they're ugly, because they are so simple and easy. Real comfort is rarely ugly to me. As I said before, they are pretty collegiate and Snooki is a student. So, by saying that she wears leggings and Uggs "to run errands," Snooki is identifying herself as a regular American co-ed (and, as I said, I wear leggings and Uggs to run errands too. I guess I'm still happy being collegiate on the weekends, though I also throw on an old, giant men's tweed overcoat [art-collegiate]).

Back in the day, in 2003 and 4, when I was a y'ung clurrber, I would buy new 'outfits' at the Bebe in Copley Plaza every weekend (also hitting up Armani Exchange and Polo and the salon-for-waxing and Calypso and BCBG...and maybe Armani Cafe [ha]). Bebe makes a specific sort of garment: short, cut-to-there, black lace, some denim, definitely sequins--clurrbwear. Why hate? It's a look, a readily available look, a sort of mall-store pop star look, Mariah and Jenny Lo for under $150. For me, it was a phase (like wearing torn up undershirts with red lace bras), but I looked good, and I get (and dig) that for some it's a forever-look.

My abundant love of Ed Hardy we can discuss another time....

The thing is
Snooki is mad stylish.

The Cut (and anybody else of a mind to condescend to Guidos) blows.

Scripture Knowledge Prize

I woke this morning from a funny, innocuous dream about smoking weed on a fancy train car next to a pair of cops who didn't seem to notice. I rose to remove my eye-makeup (woops), and muttered to myself, "I hope not sporadically." This line, like so many from Clueless, is musical, sample-able, both full and devoid of meaning. And it's proof that Brittany Murphy is a really good character actress, albeit one who was semi-ruined by Ashton Kutcher and a push to be a mainstream, rom-com lead. Watch at link (from 00:07:30).

Verses

At fifteen, this was my most favorite poem—

"The Young Housewife"
William Carlos Williams
1916

At ten AM the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband's house.
I pass solitary in my car.

Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.

The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

—And here are some lovely Mainers formalizing it.