Spaceboy

Looking back on my last post, my approach to irony could be seen as reductive: I presented one side of the word, but of course words are multi-faceted rather than singular in meaning. Concepts very rarely, if ever, settle down into basic binaries of good/bad. So since I already touched on one negative of living in a culture that is so centred on irony, I want to ask what are the positives?

Irony can be used to devastating effect to undermine the metanarratives (absolutist, totalising structures) that surround and structure our lives. Personally, I think it probably takes its best form through comedy. Take for instance, Ricky Gervais, who in “Animals”, uses irony as a tool to not only deconstruct, but completely tear apart The Bible, and hence the metanarrative that is religion. Never has the idea of God and the seven day universe seemed so absurd and ridiculous, and that is quite an accomplishment given how ridiculous it sounds anyway. If you haven’t I recomend you watch, and here’s a link to the first part. It’s ironic comedy at its absolute best. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pbEjOH7t0Q

So there’s one of the many positives of irony, a discourse that basically allows people to rip the piss out of something, but in an intellectually adventurous and stimulating way that can realign our own perspective of what is being mocked. It can be fun to use.

Linked at the top of the entry, I’m going to take a look at “Price Tag” by Jessie J, one of the biggest songs of the year so far (over 32 million views) and although bland and unadventurous, not the worst song ever written. Clean production, nice vocal performance, not ravaged by autotune. Harmless, nice and radio-friendly. Thing is, the song’s message, the idea of art as pure expression free from the grip of money and profit, is massively steeped in irony.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the idea of Jessie J singing “It’s not about the money, money, money” doesn’t really work when you consider it within the context of the multi-million dollar industry that has produced her. She is there to create a profit for this system. She, of course, also wants to make truckloads of sweet cash from the track. Sorry Jessie, but everything about this song is about the money. That’s the first, and obvious, ironic criticism of this song. But the second is more interesting.

Somehow, and I’ve never seen this before, the song actually manages to ironically critique itself through the video. If the director (Emil Nava) did this consciously or intentionally, he is some sort of sneaky, self-reflexive critical genius. If not, and this probably is the case, I think he got extremely confused and did not really know how to connect the message of the song with the correct form of video. Unfortunately, he gets the form very wrong, and thus this message completely falls apart.

It might clear up my argument a bit if I compare it to a song that portrays a similiar message, but gets the video right. I’m going to take a look at “Jenny From The Block” by Jennifer Lopez (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sob1LcGkdMg). Both songs in terms of content are very similiar, but one works and one doesn’t. Why?

Lopez’s video works because she adopts the right mask. “Yeh I’ve got money, doesn’t mean I’ve changed” she informs us, and millions of listeners believed her, even though the premise of the song is completely fucking insane. She pulls it off because of the video: The initial hidden camera footage with J.Lo in her sweats with her hair tied up is gritty and “real”, implying that hey, maybe this multi-millionaire is still part of one of the most impoverished communities in America. At 3.37, she struts down NY: “Man, money hasn’t changed J.Lo at all. Look at her strut all ghetto. ” Except of course money has changed her. This song should be ripe for ironic criticism but it’s harder to touch because the irony is hidden well in the gritty “realism” of the video: Content of the song, amalgamated with a complimentary video form successfully manipulates the listener into thinking that J.Lo is indeed, still from the block.

“Price Tag” fails horribly in this respect. The video is not gritty but clean with an emphasis on big, bright colours; Jessie J is not surrounded by NY but a harsh, whitish backround; the whole video comes across as cold and completely disconnected from the warm, hands-across-America message of the song. But it gets worse. Jessie sings

Got your shades on your eyes
And your heels so high
That you can’t even have a good time

…

Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling

Ok I get it, we need to escape from the vacuum of our commodity fetishised lives, signified above by heels, shades and bling. Only thing is, Jessie spends pretty much the whole video walking around in massive heels and a series of extravangant and very expensive dresses; at 0.47 there is a weird edit to three suited-up men wearing shades; then there’s B.O.B who is himself wearing shades. When the rapper says “keep the cars, leave them in the garage” (about 2.24), he does so beside a Cadillac that’s bouncing and driving around as if the video is saying “man, what a sweet car. Who the hell wouldn’t love a car like this?” The most hilarious, ridiculous and jarring juxtaposition is at about 1.16-1.18, where Jessie is simultaneously flaunting her bling yet criticising it lyrically. I don’t know what the director was thinking, but the video portrays a message that is literally the opposite of what the song is about, resulting in the song itself becoming an ironic vacuum of meaninglessness: Noone is convinced to stop buying shades and bling (quite the opposite), Jessie J and B.O.B get paid, the record industry makes a profit, everything keeps running like clockwork. It’s all about the money, money, money.

So there you go. Irony might mean artists like Rebecca Black become famous, but it also reveals, as “Price Tag” demonstrates, how paradoxical and absurd contemporary pop culture can be. So I guess it seems like the very thing that lets someone climb the ladder of fame simultaneously gives its audience a discourse to sweep the ladder from under the artist’s feet. Pretty ironic.