On Jacques Derrida, Avril Lavigne,
and a pint of Jack Daniels

November was quite the month: philosopher, scholar, and cunning linguist Jacques Derrida passed away and Lantern Lights headed down to San Jose for the Avril Lavigne show. You may ask how these two could be connected. Explaining Derrida in this space would be even more ludicrous than listening to your average English major explain him in a class (something that happens far too often, something that is often painful, and something that usually ends with the new cry of self-defeat: “It’s all very postmodern”).

Derrida was the godfather of deconstructionism. The big D not only makes you sound impossibly arrogant at cocktail parties, but also finally allowed English major nerds like myself to apply a label to our work that sounds a little more rock star than “close reading” or “textual analysis” or “sucking any joy out of reading.” (Dude, I hella deconstructed Catcher in the Rye last night…and the world is fucked up. It’s all very post-modern).
When I consider a term like “guilty pleasure,” I can’t help but think of Derrida (this will all connect eventually…get over your modern need for logical flow, sheeesh). A term like “guilty pleasure” is yet another example of the hierarchal nature of our language system (and this never works out well, people). The idea that some pleasures are more “pure” or more worthy of championing than another implies something dangerous in my mind. Taste is an incredibly subjective thing. Modernism and then postmodernism shattered the notion that we possess some cohesive self that is stable and constantly recognizable (five hits of acid or a Jimboys’ burrito will do this too, but Lantern Lights does not endorse acid or Jimboys). What I’m saying is we’re complex creatures people…all of us have room in our psyches for a variety of tastes that may often contradict. I think we all know this, but when you start assigning the word “guilty” to some of this complexity, you’re perverting your signifier with a dangerous signified (trust me on this one). Leave the guilt to fundamentalist Christians and idiots who “voted their moral values” and elected Bush—in other words, people who specialize in language dichotomies (heaven/hell, pure/impure, president/terrorist) without ever really recognizing that everything is perspective and as James Joyce (I think) put it, it’s only “the prison house of language” that can bind us.

All this to say that Lantern Lights does not consider Avril Lavigne a “guilty pleasure.” Nor do I feel the need to waste precious space explaining how I usually prefer Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Wilco, The Geraldine Fibbers, Social Distortion, Bad Religion, Faith No More, Helium, Sleater-Kinney, or other such bands that supposedly give me “indie cred.” (O.K. maybe I spent a little precious space). Nor is it the goal of this column to convince the haters to throw down at the alter of Avril and bask in her glory. But I have noticed (as someone who has spent some considerable time studying and writing about popular culture) that there is little grey area with Avril, which is to say people either love her or hate her (and actually having listened to one of her albums is usually not a prerequisite for an opinion).

 

The love is easy to see. You don’t sell millions and millions of albums without some deep love out there (and I am not citing this as a measure of quality— millions of people buy Toby Keith albums and millions of people have at one time thought or currently think mullets are cool). And I was there — there were girls singing along to these songs and staring at Avril like she was cool as Jesus Christ (or at least Jeff Tweedy). But the hate is pretty easy to see too. Now I’m not talking about the good natured ribbing of everyone else who lives at the Golden Lanterns when they heard about where I was spending my birthday (hey, considering the elitist prick that I am I’d make fun of me too). I’m talking about in a cultural sense on any number of anti-Avril websites or any other media outlet.

Think what you want about the music itself, that’s certainly everybody’s prerogative, to quote the American philosopher Bobby Brown. But let’s deconstruct the objective facts that we have to work with. Here is an attractive young girl. Now that is somewhat a subjective claim, and I’m not even stating my own opinion. But we do live in the age of MTV, and right or wrong, no female artist is going to get a deal in this image based world if somewhere someone didn’t see that they were attractive enough for the video and visual aspect of current pop stardom. So, she’s got straight long hair parted down the middle, a really big nose, kinda fucked up teeth, almost no boobs, and dresses like a boy more often than not. This is certainly not the stereotypical standard of beauty seen in the likes of Britney Spears and others of the teen pop ilk. If young girls, even younger boys, and yes, even the Humbert Humbert of the world can find these traits attractive, can we not celebrate that for a second? Come on, Avril has been in Maxim, and as a long time…uh…deconstructionist of Maxim magazine, I can tell you that she wore the most clothes (and most tasteful clothes) of an female that has ever been on the cover of the magazine. Sex sells people, this is not news, and if Avril were the record company puppet people seem to feel comfortable thinking she is, don’t think for a second that they would have tarted her up at every move along the way—the strong tom-boy thing may sell for awhile, but the slut will always sell more in the end.

And while Britney is “a slave for you,” and Christina “wants to get dirty,” and Beyonce will be “your naughty girl,” and Lindsey Lohan appears in a video dressed in lingerie sitting in a bird cage, Avril asks a rude young man, “did you really think that I was gonna give it up to you,” and then threatens to “kick his ass” if he doesn’t keep his hands to himself. And I’m not saying the following is poetry but; [to another asshole dude]; “You’ve got your dumb friends, I know what they say. They tell you I’m difficult, but so are they. But they don’t know me, do they even know you?” Even if Avril is fake and these sentiments (and many like them) are a ploy, these are the sentiments we’re going to complain about? Where’s a more positive, yeah I’ll say it, feminist voice from a teenage girl in popular culture? Hell I wish there were more, cause yeah, Avril’s lyrics are a bit simplistic at times, but I’ll take this over nothing else at a time in history where teenage girls have every reason to feel bad about themselves and be confused about their places in a (still) incredibly misogynistic world.

  

We live in a strange time. At some point when Britney asked us to “hit her one more time” and appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone at age 16 posed with classic kiddie porn iconography, this culture started to get comfortable and very willing to sexualize teenage girls for its own amusement. But like any other kind of female sexuality, America has a dual tendency to fear and want to punish teen girl sexuality at the same time (what did Derrida and I try to tell you about these false hierarchical dichotomies?). And in my humble opinion that’s where this Anti-Avrilism comes from. Maybe if she were horribly disfigured, it wouldn’t make teens and older folk alike uncomfortable that a pretty girl can be sexual with compromising herself, threaten to kick the boys’ asses, and yes play rock guitar (let me put the silliest of rumors to rest: at the show she played guitar [solo at times], piano, and drums. If you think this is all faked somehow for effect, then please explain to me how and why).

So anyway, the show was a lot of fun and guilt was never a factor. For those of you who were expecting a typical Lantern Lights sharp tongued bashing of the venue or the people there, I promise that somebody, something, or some institution will piss me off by the next column. Some things you can just count on.

Till next time …



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