(MCT)

“Glitter” has a pretty respectable position on the IMDb Bottom 100. At No. 85, it’s sitting pretty, 16 spots from being off the list, among the likes of “Troll 2” (1990) and “I Can Do Bad All By Myself” (2009). If you don’t know the story of “Glitter,” I’m surprised. Legend has it my girl, Mariah Carey, was going through some things at the time. She pushed an ice cream cart onto “Total Request Live,” stripped down to a bikini, and said she just wanted “to go where the butterflies are.” So, she’s crazy. Why was she on “TRL” in the first place? To promote her new vehicle that would be her crossover into acting fame. Fox promoted the movie as Mariah Carey playing—you guessed it—Mariah Carey.

The story of Mariah Carey’s life is actually quite interesting. I’m not kidding, look it up. But when you have Mariah Carey playing her life story, it just doesn’t work. The story goes that Billie (Mariah’s character) was born into poverty with an absent dad and a cracked-out mom and then waited tables as an adult to not fall into complete oblivion and found consolation only in her friends/roommates, Roxanne (Tia Texada) and Louise (Da Brat, Mariah’s real-life bffl). Then, as with Mariah, Billie goes to the right club at the right time and is spotted by an exec who instantly wants her on his roster. In Mariah’s case, that exec was Tommy Mottola, and he was the super-millionaire whom she would go on to marry. With Billie, however, he was Julian Dice (Max Beesley). Not such a big shot, but he too loved the girl. Thus began the clichéd story of love against the odds. Nutshell version: Billie shoots to superstardom, Julian gets in trouble with some shady characters, Julian and Billie have a fight and break up, Julian is killed, and Billie is devastated that she yelled at him the last time she saw him. I just spoiled the movie for you but, trust me, you don’t need to see it.

What makes “Glitter” such an epic fail is not that it is a story we’ve heard before. Most productions are just reworkings of the same few general themes. “Glitter” is an abomination because it’s stale and saccharine, and the acting is a signal that Armageddon is nigh. There is nothing special about the story, so a viewer would expect there to be something extraordinary about how the story is told. Not so with “Glitter.” It’s a run-of-the-mill retelling.  So, now the viewer at least expects good acting. No. You can’t even blame it on the fact that it’s Mariah’s first feature. The whole ensemble is bad. SO bad. I can’t even explain, except to say that the printed criticism of Mariah states that “every emotion she tries for looks like she’s searching for her car keys” is true.

Not even I, Mariah Carey’s biggest champion, could say this movie was passable. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I lied that tremendously. I hate to be another rung in the ladder of haters of this movie, but it’s legitimately one of the worst things this decade has made. And this decade made “B2K.” Don’t even watch this for the giggles. It’s that bad. IMDb’s current 2/10 is probably too much.

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that if freedom is so obviously beneficial (Mel Gibson movies never lie), why do I feel like students at this university are not granted as much freedom as we deserve? Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems as though Wash. U. students rarely get the benefit of the doubt. This idea has been stewing in my brain for quite a while, and Eliza Adelson’s article on the alleged WUPD profiling certainly brought up an aspect of what I am talking about.

Colleges are historically liberal environments. Now, by no means am I suggesting a ’60s-esque return to overt public nudity and hallucinogen abuse. I simply feel that we, as students, are fairly monitored for people who are not only supposed to be treated like adults, but also “the future leaders” of this great country.

I happen to know a student who was stopped and questioned by a University City police officer simply for walking home too late. If this does not imply some sort of assumed guilt, or some belief that we as college students are degenerate thugs, then call me Mariah Carey, and I assure you, I am not Mariah Carey. I understand that our school has an extremely tenuous relationship with the off-campus community at the moment, but is this sort of hawkish patrol really necessary? I would suspect that pretty much all of our students are intelligent and good people, given that we were admitted to this university in the first place.

Humans as a species are fallible. We make mistakes, and this is not, in our particular case, just because we are young or in college. People make stupid decisions all the time. I understand that the school prides itself on its reputation and on its academics, and those are fantastic qualities—after all, they drew me to this school in the first place. However, as a result of the image that we have to uphold, I sometimes feel that the undergraduate student body is under a constant spotlight.

Simply because a student is able to excel both in academics and in extracurriculars does not mean that he or she is flawless. Nor is that person an incorrigible, disgusting creature. There is a delicate balance, and I sometimes feel that our administration expects a little too much out of us. If we make a mistake, it’s part of life. There doesn’t always have to be a slew of judicial processes to make us realize we were wrong. A little trust between the administration and the student body would go a long way. I hope this article doesn’t get me suspended.

Signing off,
The paranoid columnist

P.S. Big Brother is always watching.

Charlie is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at chlow@artsci.wustl.edu.

Catering to a society that has been criticized as having a collective attention span matching that of a boll weevil, the entertainment industry—particularly its branch of music—has produced a number of artists who are constantly seeking to reinvent themselves. This has been a hugely successful tactic commercially, allowing mainstays like Madonna to go from “Ray of Light” to “American Living to Confessions on a Dance Floor.”

Then there’s Mariah Carey, the best-selling female in the world. Her album sales in the ’90s trumped those of any other artist from that decade, as her five-octave range and her Mary Poppins demeanor catapulted her to the record books and into the hearts of countless fans and critics worldwide. Then came her oft-publicized divorce from her domineering husband/boss, Tommy Mottola, whereupon she took more control over her image—both musically and physically. As her sound grew more hip-hop and her skirts got shorter, her fanbase shifted a tad, but the Hot 100 number ones (of which she now has more than any other artist except The Beatles) kept pouring in. She was on top, never to be stopped, it seemed, by anything less than a meteoric event. Which is what “Glitter” was. The movie tanked, the companion album failed and she lost her mind.  Hospitalized for “exhaustion,” she slowly faded from the spotlight and into obscurity.  Although she returned with the biggest sales of 2005 with “The Emancipation of Mimi,” her use of guest rappers, pop and hip-hop producers and increased sexuality since 1997’s “Butterfly” has left critics, Lambs (diehard MC fans like myself) and the general public a little nostalgic for the glory days.

“Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel,” in stores Tuesday, is that return to form. The album’s 17 tracks delve into the New York diva’s psyche more like her 20th-century efforts. No more touching her body; introspection adorns this new album. Carey rehashes the themes she’s been using constantly since her 1990 debut, but they still aren’t old because of her deeply felt songwriting and expressive vocals. The song has club bangers such as the hit “Obsessed” and the marching band anthem “Up Out My Face,” but unlike some of her previous discs’ bass heaviness, these two are as fast as Carey gets. The rest of the album’s makeup is reminiscent of the “Vision of Love” and “Always Be My Baby” days. Especially poignant:  “H.A.T.E. U” (Having A Typical Emotional Upset), with its choruses capped off by signature high notes; “Standing O,” with The-Dream’s ubiquitous repetitive hook; and the regretful ballad “Angels Cry.” By the closing track (and second single), a triumphantly executed cover of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” it’s apparent that a certain someone has been heeding the advice to go back to her old style while maintaining relevance, something every artist wishes they had the ability to do as easily and successfully as Mariah Carey.