"BLAZE THE FUCK PAST US": Jessica Hopper On The Lily Allen/Courtney Love War, a/k/a "The Blinded Nostalgia Trope Of The Aging Rock 'n' Roll Feminist"
Still a good song though right
Pretty inspired mini-manifesto here about old-guard female rockers (looking at you, too, Cherie Currie) sassing the new, innovative, vastly underrated wave of female rockers, just because we're all too nostalgic for Liz Phair or L7 or whatever. Thesis in one line: "Lily Allen, regardless of what anyone thinks, is basically the Sex Pistols of girls making bedroom electronic pop." Thesis in a few more lines:
Feminism has to move on, salute new icons, be excited by the varieties of archetypes of women in music, be they Gaga or Nite Jewel, that are self-directed, self-produced, not operating under the shadow of a Svengali hand. To not appreciate the difference in agency, or appreciate the different struggles of women now, like it's contest of who had it worst, a game of radical oneupsmanship--we might as well just start talking about how we had to walk both ways uphill to school in the snow with no shoes on. Our battles are not to be hung on the necks of the new waves of girls like an albatross... That is how current feminist work honors older feminist work is with it's progress and new paths--that is all we should ask of it as feminists. BLAZE THE FUCK PAST US.
Preferably that doesn't involve antagonizing Courtney Love on Twitter, but I suppose we all gotta pass the time somehow.
Email to Friend
Write to Editor
Print Article
