Salon.com > Gina Arnold

Badass girls on film

Mon, 22 Jan 2001 20:30:00 +0000

"Never hit a girl" is a familiar adage of Western civilization, a mother's mantra that has been traditionally enforced at least on celluloid, if not in the privacy of people's homes. Girls hitting boys, however, has never been taboo at the movies, and in the past year, several popular films have exploited its potential as a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

One of the strangest examples of the trend comes in one of the worst movies. In "Miss Congeniality," Sandra Bullock plays a geeky FBI agent working undercover as a beauty pageant contestant whose "talent" consists of inviting a male colleague (played by Benjamin Bratt) onstage with her and then, to the great amusement of the pageant officials, beating him senseless.

That Bullock, her beribboned black hair twisted into Danish buns over each ear, is dressed in a micro-miniskirt version of a dirndl complete with huge frilly petticoats and knee-high stockings only adds to the fun. And each time she nails Bratt -- in the solar plexus, intestines, nose and groin -- the audience, both in the movie and in the movie theater, is on its feet cheering.

Dance of the sugar plum anorexics

Thu, 14 Dec 2000 20:33:00 +0000

Last week, as the presidential fracas hogged the headlines and the Middle East fell to pieces, a scintillating bit of news broke without much fanfare: The mother of a little girl in San Francisco sued the San Francisco Ballet School on the grounds that her daughter's rejection from their program violated her (the daughter's) civil rights.

According to the school, Fredrika Keefer, 8, "did not have the right body" to even audition for the ballet school's program. According to Krissy Keefer, the child's mother and the director of a local dance troupe, Fredrika is "exceptionally talented." This clash of aesthetic evaluation caused Keefer to file a complaint with San Francisco's human rights commission. The complaint alleges that the ballet school, which is the recipient of $550,000 in city funds per year, has violated the new San Francisco ordinance that prohibits discrimination against people based on their height and weight.

What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?

Tue, 15 Dec 1998 17:14:00 +0000

Have you ever felt like the whole point of this planet is merely to act as a stage for big showbiz productions? Judging by the profusion of entertainment-oriented events in the sociopolitical complex, there may be some truth to that view. For the past five years, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded at the Oslo Town Hall on the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, in conjunction with a pop concert meant to be, in the words of Nobel Institute director Geir Lundstadt, "a musical tribute to peace in general and to the peace laureate of the year in specific." (Past concerts have featured Jewel, Sinéad O'Connor, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men.) When it was announced earlier this year that the lineup would include the Cranberries, it fueled speculation that the peace prize winners -- then unannounced -- would be the Irish entrants, John Hume and David Trimble, as indeed turned out to be the case.

Although this year's concert was somewhat overshadowed by the Amnesty International benefit concert held in Paris the night before, which drew the world music press to its gates with a bill boasting Radiohead, Peter Gabriel and Bruce Springsteen, the Nobel Peace Prize lineup featured Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain and Phil Collins, as well as several well-known international acts.

Liquor Giants

Thu, 30 Apr 1998 19:00:00 +0000

The Liquor Giants played in San Francisco last week, opening for the Young Fresh Fellows. Just before they went on, a guy in the pool room said to me, "So who are the Liquor Giants, anyway?"

"Do you remember a band called the Pontiac Brothers?" I said, tentatively. Now at any other gig in the world, this query would have drawn a big fat blank, but this being a Fellows show, and thus full of people for whom 1987 is a crucial year in pop, the guy's face lit up. "Fiesta in la Biblioteca!" he chanted, and rushed into the main room, where the Giants -- led by former Pontiac Brothers guitarist Ward Dotson, with former PoBro singer Matt Simon on drums -- were playing a searing yet hilarious set of songs drawn from their two new LPs comprising originals like "Beautiful Flo" and "Riverdale High" as well as covers like Bowie's "When You're a Boy," Carole King's "Locomotion" and the Move's "Fire Brigade."

It was a fairly epiphanic performance, recalling certain glorious days of yore, and it was made all the more poignant because Dotson is one of rock's great secret heroes. A founding member of the Gun Club, he took a back seat in the PoBros, though their best moments -- "Be Married Song," for example -- were when he sang. In the Liquor Giants, however, he is the front man, and one of those rare beings who can combine wittiness and sincerity into an almost heartbreaking mix.

Propellerheads

Tue, 07 Apr 1998 19:00:00 +0000

The day I arrived in London this February, they were holding a huge protest march in Hyde Park -- the largest such political gathering in over a decade. Were the English outraged by the Irish peace process, the possible bombing of Iraq or the government's recently proposed welfare cuts? No. The issue at hand was fox hunting. The protesters, it seemed, were FOR it.

This, then, is the new Britain under Tony Blair: rich, mobile, conservative and seemingly trivial at heart. And a country that is politically trivial-minded is bound to be culturally trivial-minded as well. True, veneration of the Spice Girls and Oasis in the media has waned considerably of late -- Kate Winslet is the Girl of the Period now -- but they've left some slightly sinister legacies: a massive xenophobia (propagated by the success of Britpop and the "Cool Britannia" movement), a bunch of lame imitators and an inflated sense of importance about so-called "djay culture," aka "electronica," as it's called in America, by those who can't (or won't) differentiate between things like house, ambient and drum 'n' bass.

Sharps and Flats: Madonna

Fri, 06 Mar 1998 20:00:00 +0000

I know a 15-year-old girl who calls her gym teacher "Mo." It's short for "Madonna," and as you might imagine, it's not a term of endearment. I recently asked her whence she derived this epithet, and she said, "'Cos she's just like Madonna -- she's got bleached hair and wears stretchy exercise clothes and is all '80s-ed out." To kids who were born in 1983 -- the year that Mo's self-titled debut came out -- Madonna, despite all her innovations and subversions and gender groundbreaking, is nothing more than a slightly rattled femme fatale, the kind of woman who dresses too young for her age.

Of course, this happens to everybody. But somehow I thought that with all her stylistic flexibility, Madonna, like David Bowie before her, would be exempt from the process. And in some ways, thanks in part to all those costume changes, she is. Madonna is not quite yet a caricature of herself, unlike Robert Smith of the Cure, Boy George or Michael Jackson (all of whom also had hits in 1983); nor is she a somber and wrinkly dinosaur, like Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen or Bono.

Sharps and Flats: Tommy Keene

Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:00:00 +0000

Everyone knows someone whose taste in music has frozen in time: crazy aunts who listen exclusively to Elvis, bubba-like brothers who love Blue Oyster Cult. Critics tend to have contempt for such stick-in-the-mudness, but the truth is, all of us have a sound that sends us, spiritually speaking. For me, it's the kind of jangle-pop typified by R.E.M.'s first five LPs, as well as that of their peers like the Dbs, the Feelies and Tommy Keene.

Of those acts, Keene has been simultaneously the most commercially promising -- and the most invisible. Something about his music melts into thin air, despite the fact that songs like "Paper Words and Lies" and "Run Now" are at least as direct and as melodic as those of Squeeze, Ben Vaughan or Marshall Crenshaw. Keene's personality isn't exactly imposing, however: Upon winning the Pazz and Jop poll for his 1984 EP "Places That Are Gone," he signed to Geffen, released two LPs, and all but disappeared from view.

Sharps and Flats: Pearl Jam

Mon, 02 Feb 1998 20:00:00 +0000

One of the saddest truths about rock 'n' roll is that a band can make the most wonderful music imaginable, but if its members lack charisma, that stellar music has little hope of being heard. Conversely, bad music made by strong but evil personalities is a sure-fire winner, and the '90s have proved that with their abundance of such ugly types. Considering that the idea of a rock band that even hints at having a moral center is practically antithetical to the entire era, the career trajectory of Pearl Jam -- who have refused to make videos, instituted a hopeless antitrust suit against Ticketmaster, eschewed drug addiction, affairs with models and so on and so forth -- has been brave beyond measure.

Unfortunately, moral character only gets you so far in life, and the truth is that despite being the most morally uplifting and personally charismatic band of our time, Pearl Jam has actually not made a great record since "Ten" in 1991. Indeed, in the past five years, the band has seen its sales base diminish from multi-platinum to, well, less, although this may have more to do with their lack of videos than lack of singles. Because one of the original tenets of grunge was "small is beautiful," Pearl Jam has seemed perfectly comfortable -- nay, pleased -- with commercial self-sabotage. Its fans, however, may have been getting a little restless. For them, "Yield" will come as a great relief.

Olympics bound

Mon, 19 Jan 1998 20:00:00 +0000

I once met a man whose hobby was solar eclipses. Every four years, he went with a tour group to the place where it was best viewed, be it Kamchatka, Borneo or Tierra del Fuego. His living room had a map on the wall with all the places he'd been to marked with little red flags; a stranger might be forgiven for thinking he was plotting world domination.

To me, eclipse junkiehood is understandable, since travel is always so much more valuable if it involves some kind of quest or mission. I know, because to date I have swum at the pools used for the London (1948), Helsinki (1952) and Barcelona (1992) Olympics, and I would have swum in Tokyo's Yoyogi Stadium (1964) as well, except that I was there in the winter, when it's turned into an ice rink.

I didn't visit any of those cities in order to go swimming. But the fact is that having a slightly quirky personal agenda has enriched every journey I've ever taken. It has, among other things, taken me to different neighborhoods than I might have gone to otherwise; it has taught me strange bus routes and the word for "bathing cap" in Spanish.

Chumbawamba

Mon, 01 Dec 1997 20:00:00 +0000

In English slang, a tubthumper is someone who stands on a tub at a political meeting and "thumps" home their point with an excess of emotion, and it perfectly describes Chumbawamba. The irony of the fact that this old and radical agitpop band's current single, "Tubthumping," is a huge hit in America can only be expressed by a comparison: It's as if Fugazi struck it rich with a song called "Rant." Like another Leeds-based band, the Mekons, Chumbawamba's record includes explanatory quotes from a host of "radical" thinkers -- people like Jerry Rubin, Baudelaire, Plato, Malcolm McLaren and the inevitable bit of Parisian graffiti. But unfortunately, few things are more irritating than bands who want to educate their audience. Whether it's Billy Bragg preaching about voting Labor or Rage Against the Machine yelping on about Leonard Peltier, political rock is invariably didactic and boring.

Mariah Carey

Thu, 30 Oct 1997 20:00:00 +0000

In her long seven-year reign at the top of the pop charts, Mariah Carey's records have sold in excess of 80 million copies. Yet she has never done a U.S. tour, seldom plays live except in the most controlled environments and only does the kind of substanceless and butt-kissy interviews which preclude her from being seen on the covers of most reputable major magazines. That Carey's record sales have been propelled entirely by videos and radio rather then media hype ought to be a sign of their inherent worth, but more likely they've simply been fueled by the bottomless pockets of her husband, Sony head Tommy Mottola, whom Carey, in her wisdom, has used to guarantee herself an endless front of industry influence.

This isn't to say that Carey isn't also talented. The woman may have a ruthless career plan, but she also has genuine pipes and, seemingly, her finger directly on the pulse of the populace. This year, Carey, now sure of her fan base, divorced Mottola just in time for the release of "Butterfly," her fifth and cheesiest LP yet. Like her previous LPs, it is one long exercise in sugary corn -- the music is so overproduced, so layered and harmonized and full of fa-la-la vocalizing, that one is hard-put to figure out where the melody begins within each mix. As for emotional content, Mariah Carey makes Whitney Houston look like PJ Harvey.