Hello folks! Took a week off last week because I didn't have anything I wanted to write about. Fear not, I'm back, and I've got stuff I want to write about. First I'm going to just talk about a couple of songs that I've been really liking this week, that have no particular connection to my theme. Then we'll dive in! Let's go.
I've been listening to Orla Gartland's Little Chaos over and over this week. It's just so much fun! Bubbly background synths, heavy drums, a structure that seems designed to throw you off, just a little bit. It's all great. I've been a big fan of Gartland's earlier work (especially Between My Teeth, I Go Crazy), but as is my way I rarely remember or have the motivation to listen to new music from artists. Oops! It's often worth it (apart from when it isn't... and you're just disappointed...). Anyway, I'm glad this came up for me to listen to it because I wouldn't have otherwise and it really bangs. It represents a great evolution I think in her style & production, which both feel much matured and full. You can really feel how she's grown since the bedroom-pop-y days, and she's doing great things with the new capabilities.
Another random one that's been in my ears a good amount is Spit. from WARGASM. I am familiar with & a fan of other tracks by WARGASM (mostly POSTMODERN RHAPSODY which is such good fun and Salma Hayek), but I have to thank Nathan for bringing this track up specifically because it really is great. So so satisfying to listen to, raucous joy, and fun journey to go on. It sort of feels like it has a lot of little acts. Before you get bored of one thing it's doing, it's on to the next with another great hook. I mentioned to Nathan my love of nu metal and this is a lot of why --- the blend of heavy + angry verses with often clean pop hooks is a big part of what makes this song and others so addictive.
Alright now on to my THEME which is about SUPERMAN. Did you know I watched Superman recently? I might've mentioned it once or twice. I've also been reading Stone Butch Blues this week, which I will also make relevant, I promise. We'll tie it all together. Anyway, Superman. The film was great. I am a big comics fan (well, I'm average-sized but my love for them is not), but I've been pretty disappointed in the waves of comic-book-movie slop that's been crashing endlessly in cinemas. Clearly the most trustworthy people to trust are randos on tumblr and they said the movie was good, so I was willing to test it out (and subject Adi to it, whether it was good or not). Luckily, the people of tumblr were correct, and it was really enjoyable. From the first scene where we see Superman beat-up and miserable lying in the snow, I knew it would be a good film. It's so important to humanise your heroes, and starting with him losing was a fantastic way to do that immediately.
Superman is a James Gunn film, which of course it means it has a fight scene over jaunty music. A classic, it's fun every time, and in this film it was 5 Years Time from Noah and the Whale. It's a great summer-y track that I knew I was going to have to look up immediately after leaving the cinema, because it was fun & sounded familiar (but I couldn't place why). Well, it was because it was by Noah and the Whale, famous to me because of their track Blue Skies. Ahh, how I love this song. It's a lovely chill song, and I like the message a lot too. I like that the main chorus sings, "But blue skies are coming", but the song ends by acknowledging, "But I know that it's hard". I really enjoy that it's that way round. Blue skies are coming, things will get better, it'll be ok. But in the meantime it's still hard, and that's ok too. It doesn't get easier, sometimes, just because you know it'll be better later. Well, thanks James Gunn for reminding me of this lovely song that I've listened to over many years.
Actually, I think the film itself helped me to feel the message of the song. Yeah, yeah, in terms of the fact that hopefully comic book movies will get better. But in a broader sense too. Years of slop produced by Disney about superheroes sponsored by the US Military left me feeling a little despondent about the direction we're going, for a few reasons. First of all, art is important, and yes, movies you can see for 5£ on a weekend are an important facet of that, bringing it to the common people, so to say. It's not the most "high" art, but neither are comic books. Acting like because they're "low", "common", they don't deserve people putting real love and thought into them is just sad, and it doesn't serve the audience. And I'd still be loathe to call this "art" in a traditional sense, but I think there was clearly more thought put into the characters, design, effects, and message than I've seen as of late in similar blockbuster films, so I liked that about it.
I also was genuinely shocked to watch a film of this variety and calibre that went with the message that even if it's a historic ally of the US attacking & invading other countries, we must put our morals at the heart of the problem and do the right thing, even if that means going against the (US) government's stance, public opinions, and so forth. Gunn emphasises the fact that Superman is an (illegal) alien, that people distrust him because of this, despite the fact that he has literally dedicated his life to looking after his city. He also makes it explicit that Superman does not represent the US, but himself & what he believes is right.
It really got me thinking about superhero stories, and what they mean to our culture. I will not be anywhere near the first to draw these allusions and to discuss this topic, but it seemed worth it anyway. First, on a specific level, I immediately walked out the film thinking about parallels of Superman as a golem. I hope you are familiar, but if you are not, in brief golems are constructs from Jewish folklore. They are created from clay and then animated, often after the Hebrew characters for "Truth" are inscribed on their forehead. Traditionally, they are very obedient, and are protectors of Jewish communities. For example, the most famous story is of the Golem of Prague, in which the golem was built to protect the Prague ghetto from antisemitic attacks and pogroms. These parallels have historically been drawn more explicitly with Captain America in a way that is hopefully self-explanatory, but they're pretty relevant in Superman as well. It is certainly significant that the first Superman comics were written in 1938, by two Jewish authors. His motto of, "Truth, Justice and the American Way" makes clear his aims to protect his community, and it's also interesting that he is an immigrant, as were his creators. Jerry Siegel, who was the first writer from Superman, was the son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. My great-grandparents, and grandfather, were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, escaping pogroms and antisemitism. It's a story that matters a lot to me. It's a story that is still, tragically, relevant today.
I think also, in general, we can expand this way of looking at superheroes. While to me, Superman represents hope and protection through the lens of the golem, this is an overall theme of superhero stories. They're stories that distill our ideals. If you could be anything, what would you be? The answer in Superman, was someone strong enough to fight against our oppressors. Other answers, though, exist too. We lay our desires at the feet of superhero stories, and see our hopes reflected back. They tell us that the ordinary can be extraordinary, that the meek can become strong, that the forgotten can be championed.
Now, of course, stories are one thing. One important thing. But real life (can be) another. But superheroes are around us, in real life, too. People who represent the same values, who fight the same fights. That's why I was thinking about Stone Butch Blues, too. Leslie Feinberg was a Jewish trans lesbian activist. Reading about hir life, and the slices of hir life that can be seen through the fiction of Stone Butch Blues, it's easy to see if anyone is a superhero, surely zie was one. Someone who embodied the same characteristics, in getting beat up, over and over again, metaphorically and literally, and getting back up again over and over again to defend hirself and hir community. We have people like hir to thank for the lives that we get to live nowadays.
That's why, I think it's important that the Superman film emphasises, too, that despite being alien, Clark is so so human too. That's his strength, in fact. That he cares, and he loves, and he's as human as the rest of us. Because it's easy to think that of course, these superheros are incredible because they're so strong, and can do these things we can't, and that's why they can fight the people they need to. And Clark says, well, no. He can do those things because he cares, and he's willing to risk putting himself in danger to do the right thing. He cares and, if you do too, you've already got one thing in common. It's an easy next step, then, to be able to ask --- well, if I care, how can I use the powers I have to support those who need it? Because of course, the thing that makes him and Feinberg and all the other heroes both real and fictional into heroes is not their strength, but the way that they use it.
A scene that, for me, drives home this human-ness at his core, is when he returns back home to stay with his parents. They live in rural Kansas, a stereotypical Midwest experience. His parents, their house, the conversations they have, everything is designed to drive home just how normal he is. It seemed like a scene that was probably designed to make people cry, but it got me a lot more than anybody else in the cinema. Here's why --- Clark's father opens the screen door to go talk to him outside, and it was exactly the same as the one at my grandma's house. The same latch, the same inner door that's never actually shut. It was the same, too, in that it was actually her back door, but we never opened the front door, in all the time I spend at her house, other than to pick up the newspaper every morning. The back door was good enough for us.
All of this swings around to me, finally, talking about my song of the week. It will probably not be new to you, but I think my perspective on it is. We're listening to Hard Times, by Ethel Cain. She writes, a lot, about that Midwestern experience too. The song opens with the sound of cicadas, and though you can't hear them, I can see in front of my eyes the lightning bugs darting through the warm dark sky. It reminds me of sitting on the patio with my grandma, getting bitten up by the bugs flitting through the dark. It's such an ordinary image, but it was special for me. We don't have screens in the UK --- no need, mostly, although as it gets hotter and hotter I keep reconsidering that truth. So it's an image that stays connected, exclusively, to her.
I like the song a lot, too, on its own. I need to be clear about that. It has a soft slow rhythm, and it flows easy across the track, never making too much of a show of anything. The chorus in the background wash over the whole song, making it feel holy, all-encompassing. The lyrics do not, much, factor into my enjoyment or the connections I have to the song (apart from, of course, "Where happiness ends and dies with you").
My grandma was born in Kent, but moved to New York to live with my grandfather. Two immigrants, living together in a third country of neither of their birth. My grandfather died when he was young, when my father was young, before I was anything at all. My grandma took over the mantle of his story. She took on the duty, diligently, of discovering, recording, and preserving our family history. She used her power, to do what she could, in protecting and sharing the story of their escape from Lithuania, just in time. I have no other family on that side, because nobody else survived. So, though I've gone on a bit of a meandering path in telling my story, hopefully you've understood the core of it. It's about caring, and my grandma cared so so much. And, hopefully, I care a lot too. I try my best, anyway.
May her memory be a blessing.
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