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Now, some of you (my reader[s?]) may not know this, but I actually follow the �popular music,� perhaps more closely than I�d generally like to admit. So I was aware of Carly Rae Jepson a good week or two before �Call Me, Maybe� �blew up the charts.� I saw the video on MTV Hits, which is a cable channel that�s kind of like MTV except they play music videos. First, for those of you who haven't seen the video, here it is (my apologies if you have to navigate through the VEVO rigmarole):
My initial reactions to the video went something like this:
1. What the hell is this?
2. What the fuck kind of white trash name is �Carly Rae Jepson?�
3. Oh, ok, this is really cute.
4. Hahahaha, annnnnnnd he�s actually gay!
Because if you�ve seen the video�and I�m assuming most people have�then you know that it ends with the hot guy that Jepson�s been pursuing giving his phone number to one of the guys in her band. Because he�s gay. Which is genuinely funny, and this is in large part because it seriously subverts the format for this kind of video. Really, it�s downright surprising. Because who is Carly Rae Jepson? As far as I can tell, she was the contestant on some kind of Canadian Idol-style show, and she looks really wholesome and cute, and one would expect her debut music video to be wholesome and cute and to not deviate one iota from the established formula. And then, bam, out of nowhere! An acknowledgement that some men are gay!
And isn�t it refreshing to see a video where the gayness isn�t there to (a) illustrate a political point (like in that really misguided Rise Against video where the gay kids are all on the verge of committing suicide but then they decide not to because they realize that they can one day run for congress or something) or (b) dance around and aggrandize Lady Gaga? The gay guy in the �Call Me, Maybe� video is just there, being himself, going about his business (which, granted, consists of taking his shirt off while mowing the lawn, and then washing his car in a tank top, and generally being really muscular, but still!).
Oh, and speaking of Lady Gaga, wasn�t that last album of hers a joyless piece of shit? I mean, did anyone actually like that? Did anyone actually like �Born This Way (a.k.a. I like it when gay people give me their money)�? And since when the fuck can �non-Hispanic white� people (to use the U.S. census�s terminology) like Lady Gaga use the word �chola?� She couldn�t find anything else to fit the meter? James, �Hispanic� and �Latino� are both three syllables and she needed a two-syllable word. Well, the line goes, �Your black white beige chola descent, your Lebanese, your Orient.� Now, she could just drop �beige� and then it could go, �Your black white Latino descent.� But the stresses would have been awkward�Lady Gaga doesn�t give a shit! As Jonah Weiner at Slate pointed out, look at the weird syntax that abounds in lines like, �I�ve got a reason that you�re who should take me home, tonight.�
And the faux-provocations and the shallow erudition! For instance, in the �Love Game� video, we see her wearing a hat and suspenders like Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter. So now we know that Gaga saw The Night Porter (a movie about Nazis and sadomasochism) and she liked it, which just goes to show how edgy she is. Ok. So what? We know that Gaga saw a movie that she thinks makes her look cool. There�s nothing more to it. The Charlotte Rampling imagery doesn�t add anything substantive to the video. It certainly doesn�t make sense in terms of the video�s storyline (if it can be said to have one; it goes like this: Gaga and her homosexual dance crew show up in the subway to dance and sing about sex. Then the cops show up to shut the party down. Then Gaga seduces them. Then they sing and dance some more).
It�s only a slight step above the faux-provocation of Katy Perry�s �I Kissed a Girl,� which is so timid that it repeatedly throws in the line, �Hope my boyfriend don�t mind it,� so as to say, �Don�t worry kids, she�s not actually queer. That would be gay. No, she�s just making out with a girl because it�s hot. To men.� Well, let me tell you, Katy, I�m sure your boyfriend won�t mind it. I think he�d be delighted, in fact, as long as you �finish� with him. And sure enough, the video ends with Perry in bed with a man (presumably the boyfriend), awakening from the Sapphic orgy, which was apparently just a dream. I said at the time and I�ll say again that this song and video are actually downright reactionary, because they�re predicated on the notion that there�s something fundamentally deviant about lesbianism, and that it�s important for Katy to end up with a man in the end. A truly subversive song would have gone something like, �I kissed a girl, and I liked it, because I�m gay, and that�s not really a big deal.� Now, admittedly, that song might not have been as popular, but at least it would have been less laden with bullshit.
And this brings me back to the �Call Me, Maybe� video, which can almost be seen as an inversion of the �I Kissed a Girl� video. While Katy Perry spends the video dreaming about girls and then wakes up in bed with her boyfriend, Carly Rae Jepson spends her video fantasizing about hooking up with this really hot guy, only for the video to conclude with the realitythat this guy is gay and isn�t at all interested in her. If homosexuality is a dream in �I Kissed a Girl,� it�s a concrete fact in �Call Me, Maybe.�
So kudos to you, Ms. Jepson. In spite of your bland, radio-friendly wholesomeness, you�ve proven yourself to be more genuinely subversive than Katy Perry or Lady Gaga could ever hope to be. Because Gaga�s not subversive; her gays are merely decorative; she exploits them just as much and just as distastefully as Gwen Stefani exploited those Harajuku Girls (an Asian minstrel show, Margaret Cho called them). And speaking of which, whatever happened to the Harajuku Girls? Now that Stefani�s back with No Doubt, has she just discarded them? Carly Ray Jepson will never discard her gay guy, because he never belonged to her to begin with, and he, if anything, did the discarding.
Hopefully Carly Rae Jepson doesn�t turn out to be a one-hit-wonder. I�d really like to hear more of her emancipatory music.
