Student Life Archives

More often than not, when a bevy of free time decides to unload itself on me (which, incidentally, is more often than not), I can be found at Borders, wandering the lit or short-essay aisles, strapping on pairs of headphones, sipping a grande Mochaberry. I know I’m not supposed to get my pop-culture fix at an institution so corporate as the Books-Music-Cafe; if I really wanted to play by heart and support my local indie spots, I’d waste those hours at Vintage Vinyl, carrying-out Meshuggah (fighting the sumptuous temptation of a Starbucks frappucino, just across the street). Don’t think I don’t feel guilty.

Only so guilty, though. For one, the listening capacity at Borders trumps Vintage by a quarter-ton, if only because the headphones don’t leave crevasses in your skull and you can actually listen to almost everything. (You have to ignore the cutesy pay-for-play suggestion/descriptions, true, but then again it’s almost amusing when you pass that Gavin DeGraw blurb for the umpteenth time and it still says, with hilariously glib, incorrect certainty, “You’ve chosen well.”) Admirable though Vintage may be in attempting to guide my ears towards carefully selected LPs, I’d rather just be able to switch from Joe Strummer to Starsailor to Michael McDonald (the last one purely for kicks, I assure you-I recommend “Motown,” his recent album of hilariously sacreligious soul covers, and a true panacea for any depressed soul) at the momentary scan of a barcode.

More importantly, though, is the flat-out price of it all. I respect when people demand that we “support independent record stores,” and I genuinely admire those who do so. I just can’t afford it. I’m a college student, and, as a general rule, college students aren’t exactly bathing in disposable funds. Incidentally, I just got a new job, and thus was able this past weekend for the first time in some time to guiltlessly drop some cash on a disc-The Thrills, “So Much For The City,” jury’s still out-but still…I bought it at Best Buy, for $9.99 sticker price. At Vintage-or Streetside, or any indie store lacking a national presence-such a purchase would likely set me back a good fifteen bucks. For a poor, collegiate, music-buying bastard like myself, that five-dollar difference makes a difference, and adds up. Record labels are wisely cranking down the price of their new releases and lesser-known acts, but search Amazon.com and you’ll still see list prices of $18.98 for, say, the fresh Norah Jones. (On which the jury is in. Spectacular album. Songs like “Be Here to Love Me” are reasons life’s worth living.) While conglomerates like Best Buy, Borders and Circuit City can afford to plummet far beneath that, indies can only go so low. And thus people like me are forced to the unfortunate conclusion that, well…fuck Vintage Vinyl.

(Now Hear This’s usual author, the incomparable Jess Minnen, will return next week; in the interim, she can be contacted at her place of work, Vintage Vinyl.)

Like I said, this pains me. Then again, I actually buy my records. Some people find this baffling. A conversation recently erupted before my screenwriting class, wherein my declared status as a musical “purist”-one who purchases rather than downloads-was challenged by a skeptical professor who apparently underestimates the ability of foolish twenty-one-year-olds to blow lifetimes’ worth of cash on a CD collection climbing towards five hundred. “It’s the fading art of the album,” I argued, “if people keep downloading individual songs for ninety-nine cents a pop (or free), artists won’t bother to craft unified musical statements anymore. They’ll just punch out five or six singles and post them all on iTunes. iPods are evil. They’re like the Segways of personal music accessories. Segways filled with Christ-awful songs by Incubus and Hilary Duff.”

Etc. Needless to say, I find myself standing on some musical moral middleground. I can’t bring myself to spend five dollars more at my local independent blah-blah-blah, but I can find motivation to drop at least ten bucks on a set of songs I could likely garner for free, given time and a little bit of Internet moxie. A lot of people would probably file such symptoms under the “nonsensical” heading of their mental buddylist (probably while downloading Nickelback or something), but I’ll take being crazy if it means enjoying the smell of a new CD. Or the crisp anticipation that comes with peeling away the plastic. The satisfaction of letting one track flow into another and let the album take hold, like a picture, a book, a painting, or-as from me you might usually expect-a movie.

Oh, and one more thing. The ability to wax romantic about, say, ripping shrinkwrap. Even if it does say “Borders” on the sticker.

Celluloid Paralysis is live art. Be a part of it.

Bernell Dorrough

Rufus Wainwright managed to sum up his performance himself better than any reviewer could. Playing before a packed house at The Pageant last Sunday, Wainwright declared to the audience midway through his set that, “Even with my voice scratchy it’s still a Cadillac.” There’s simply not much more to say. In an evening where Wainwright’s banter was perhaps as memorable as the music itself, his voice alone was what stood out. Forget the often uninspiring lyrics. Forget the musical arrangements that are best conveyed on compact disc. Forget his ostensible sexual orientation (he is gay if anyone is still curious). The man simply has one of the most powerful and elegant sets of vocal chords in popular music.

Wainwright’s set consisted chiefly of music from his newest release, “Want One.” While the audience seemed more comfortable with his more recognizable music from his previous albums “Poses” and the self titled “Rufus Wainwright,” the highlights of the concert remained the music from “Want One.” Moving from the climactic “14th Street” and “Go or Go Ahead” to the slower, tongue-in-cheek “Vibrate,” Wainwright succeeded in transferring the meticulously produced album onto the live stage. His most appreciated gesture came in the first song of his encore, where he and his band reentered wearing black capes and pointy hats as the beginning chants and tuba of the first song off “Want One,” “Oh What a World” played over the loud speaker. The bizarre costume, however, served to fit in quite nicely to the wry opening lyric of, “Men reading fashion magazines. Oh what a world it seems we live in, straight man.” In addition to songs from “Want One,” Wainwright did play some of his standards, including the Leonard Cohen cover, “Hallelujah,” and “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.” Some songs from the yet to be released “Want To” were also heard, such as “Gay Messiah,” a song which as one could imagine included a rather humorous preamble.

Altogether, Wainwright glided through his 2-hour set with particular ease considering the often epic proportions of his music. He may play piano and guitar, but when compared to the other six members of his band that’s merely elementary. Mandolins, violins, basses, double basses, keyboards, drums, and guitars both electric and acoustic were all effortlessly incorporated into the show. Despite the abundance of instruments, Wainwright appeared most comfortable when alone on stage. Opening and closing the set with solo performances – including an encore which extended to two additional songs that he couldn’t help but play – The Pageant audience was silent and entranced as it watched Wainwright with his piano; all the while wondering how exactly it is possible that with all his romance, talent, and pristine looks, he has yet to find lasting love. There was many a man (and woman) at the Pageant last Sunday that would be more than happy to ride in a Cadillac with him any day.

Bernell Dorrough

The “Passion”: It’s still just a movie

Try Googling “the passion” and you generally get two types of web sites: those dealing with the art of loving, and others devoted to either lauding or profaning Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” which opens in theaters today. The Aussie actor/director/sex object for women over 40 has stirred up quite a Biblical brouhaha with his special project, which graphically depicts the last few hours of Jesus’ life. Amid all the accusations of anti-Semitism and ultra-conservative Catholic dogma, all I can say is-Mary Magdalene, what a babe! Monica Bellucci? Best. Mary. Ever. Others, however, see a potential WMD where I see an excuse to polish up my Latin skills. The road has been long and tortuous for Gibson’s brainchild, but its premier today will allow millions to actually formulate their own opinion for our generation’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

To recap the chain of events: when Gibson announced his project, people discovered the star of “What Women Want” and “Chicken Run” is actually a radical fringe Catholic who rejects Vatican II, a papal decree from 1965 that cleared the Jews of the long-standing charge of deicide. If this weren’t enough, Mel’s kooky dad Hutton Gibson explained to the New York Times last year that the Holocaust was exaggerated, and in a more recent interview, he talked of a Jewish conspiracy to create “one world religion and one world government.” The younger Gibson added fuel to the fire when he told Peggy Noonan that “World War II killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps.” Jewish leaders took this as a deliberate downplaying of the Jews’ suffering. Gibson then basically dumped the whole gas tank on the fire when he said of the Times’ Frank Rich, who called his father a Holocaust denier, “I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.” Mr. Gibson, meet Mr. Tyson. I believe he patented that line.

The scary thing about all this back-and-forth B.S. is that “The Passion of the Christ” actually has the potential to cause one person to harm another. There is no doubt that people will argue about this movie after they actually see it. But if people extend the film’s influence on them onto others by force-through violence, for example-well, then they’re just stupid. But can Gibson be held accountable for this? No, because he brought his vision to life through his own personal funding. It’s up to the adults to who see the movie (it’s rated R for violence) to react responsibly.

Some of us don’t really give a monkey’s petoot about these issues. The question still remains to those who haven’t been able to see the film yet: is it quality cinema? If so, what can we appreciate about its form and content? If it’s horse crap, we can go about our lives and forget all about Gibson’s turkey. Here’s hoping that it’s good, though, and that it’s not anti-Semitic. (Most recent reports from screenings say the most potentially offensive content has been removed.) Gibson may have proved himself to be a weirdo, but Howard Hughes was insane, and Klaus Kinski was an asshole, but they both made great movies. That’s what I go in hoping for in a case like this: a great film, and not a tool for either evangelical tent revivals or anti-Semitic hate groups. Just grab your popcorn and watch it like any other film.

The Predecessors in controversial

It has been quite some time since a movie has generated a barrage of both favorable and unfavorable criticism that would compare to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” In the last few weeks, the film has been called everything from anti-Semitic to the most accurate depiction of the Crucifixion. This, however, is not the first time a movie has caused such controversy in the religious world. In recent memory, Martin Scorsese’s controversial work, “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1988 and Kevin Smith’s religious comedy, “Dogma” in 1999 stand out as the best example of movies that have conjured up religious debate.

“The Last Temptation of Christ,” directed by the great cinematic visionary Martin Scorsese, premiered in the United States and Canada on August 12, 1988 under an onslaught of overwhelming criticism. Scorsese depicted Jesus (played by Willem Dafoe) as fully human, possessing God’s gift of free will and capable of succumbing to the weaknesses of all humans. Although it was clear to critics that the film was one of Scorsese’s greatest movies and one of the best cinematic achievements that year, Christian fundamentalists thought otherwise.

According to reporter Aljean Harmetz, Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association wrote to Sidney J. Sheinberg, the president of MCA and “accused the studio of deliberate anti-Christian bias and asked: How many Christians are in the top positions of MCA/Universal? How many Christians sit on the board of directors at MCA?” On the day of the premiere, demonstrators led by the Rev. R.L. Hymers of the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle in Los Angeles, formed a tableau outside Universal in which Lew Wasserman, the chairman of MCA, was represented as nailing Jesus to a cross. Harmetz also went on to write that “these fundamentalist extremists even went so far as to attempt to buy the negative of the film, so that they could destroy it.”

Kevin Smith, the director who has produced such cult-classic comedies like “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy,” took his shot at religion with the film “Dogma,” which certainly did not fail in attracting attention from Christian fundamentalists. Filmfour, the British filmmaking company, received hate mail in a storm of protest at its involvement with the controversial “Dogma.” The film company, which handled the movie’s British distribution, received around 100 letters from Christians upset by the film’s “blasphemous” content. One of the letters complained that “Dogma” attacked “everything Roman Catholics hold dear.” It also said the film, “insults the virginity of Holy Mary and St. Joseph, compares the holy sacrifice of the Mass to sexual intercourse and has a female rock star (Alanis Morrisette) playing the role of God.”

These movies exemplify the type of pressure that “The Passion of the Christ” has undoubtedly faced these last few weeks. When a film comes along that is able to stir up dispute around the country from all circles of thought, it is no different from any piece of artwork that has had its share of controversy throughout history. From this aspect, “The Passion of the Christ” has already succeeded.

In the journalistic profession, arts and entertainment journalists are often seen as the lowest of the low. What we cover is unimportant and lacks substance. News reporters, who cover the breaking stories in various arenas-national and local politics, crime, etc.-sometimes see us as journalists who lack merit. After all, shouldn’t we be covering something important?

Whenever I have spoken with professional journalists who have asked me which section of my school newspaper I work for, I have noticed thinly veiled contempt at the path I have chosen. For those who read Cadenza with any regularity, you’ll know that for the most part I tend to write about obscure music that, I have been told, nobody wants to read about. That, or I try to write about St. Louis culture outside of the Washington University mainstream-gambling, dive bars, greasy spoons, other things that interest me. I hope my interest spurs interest in what I think are worthy things in the city and in the widespread musical landscape to be discovered and enjoyed.

I have begun to think that this is a lost cause. Feedback in general to our section is fairly negative. The movies and albums we review are too obscure, we don’t pay enough attention to the University’s own music scene, we do not cover mainstream popular culture, and our arts and entertainment section is too focused on arts and entertainment and not enough on personality profiles and fluff pieces to interest the average reader.

Not only are we seen as the lowest of the low by other journalists, we arts and entertainment journalists are also seen as the lowest of the low by people in arts and entertainment fields. There is an old clich that every rock critic is a failed musician and every film critic is a failed screenwriter/director/actor-it is very similar to the idea that many in academia are failures because of the old adage, “those who can’t do, teach.” Those who write about music must be doing what they are doing just so they can come the tiniest bit closer to living the dream that they have failed to reach, right?

Rock critics and journalists are treated very poorly by those they write about. It seems to make little sense-besides word of mouth, press is often the only avenue for bands to become well-known. Arts and entertainment journalists are an important part of the whole machine, yet they are seen as the cog that only receives as little WD-40 as possible to keep it running. Countless times I have set up interviews with bands only to have them repeatedly back out, leaving a disgruntled publicist flailing to keep me interested in writing a preview or a review. I know part of this has to do with working for a college newspaper-I guess if I was a rock star, I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either-but that is not the point.

I recently had the fortune of dining with some well-known journalists. Some wrote about world affairs and other high-falutin things, and some wrote about arts and entertainment or sports-I think sportswriters also have to deal with the whole failed (insert whatever here – rock star – director – athlete) problem. After hearing a lot of talk about the importance of this and that in journalism, my hope for the whole thing returned. It returned because of what a well-respected columnist said-something along the lines of: “You can get a headline on the front page totally wrong and no one will care, but if you mess up the TV schedule the switchboard will light up.” Another noted that more people write or call in about which comics run when than nearly anything else she had to deal with.

Surely, this rant is nothing more than that, a rant-incoherent babble by the editor of a section that, according to many on Student Life staff, no one reads, but in all of the random musings a point has emerged. There is an importance to what arts and entertainment journalists do. It’s just not one that’s often recognized by those who see themselves as the “real” journalists.