Ashlee Simpson and the Suburbs
Music Video Review
Artist: Ashlee Simpson
Song: "Lala" (Scroll down for "Lala" and its many streams)
Album: "Autobiography"
Director: Joseph Kahn
"Lala" begins with a standard suburban grid, some quick shots of girls hanging out, and then a closer view of a section of the grid. Soon, the camera closes in on Ashlee Simpson lazing about, and then takes in the shopworn symbols of the suburbs: a one-story house, power lines, trucks and minivans. To emphasize the terrain's superficiality, mirrors, glass, and chrome are glintz-ified. And after these quick-shot cliches, there comes a reward: there's a really beautiful shot of a slightly coiled, green water hose. It's simple and understated--almost obvious, but not quite. The hose is what made me think this video had potential to find the strange beauty of banality. I wanted to say that the colors sort of reminded me of Dan Graham's "Homes for America" and I kind of wanted it to have the sharp observation characteristic of a Stephen Shore photograph.
But that quickly seemed an inept comparison. The video has the fundamental flaw of not really know what it's doing. What ensues is Simpson hanging out with her girls, doing suburban teenage rebel-type stuff. They stomp on the roofs of minivans, they kick down garbage cans, and loiter in the parking lots of donut shops. They laugh at skaters who fall flat on their tricks. And Ashlee throws her soft drinks at annoying boys. While this felt a wee bit sophomoric, as these images flickered by, I decided I really liked the fact that Simpson isn't really trying to get the attention of a boy. And, it's pretty cool that she doesn't use the video to make herself out to be a foresaken victim. I like that she's hanging with her girls playing videogames, that after a party gets broken up by the cops, she leads her friends to the laundromat. That's all fine and good until you listen to the lyrics: she's singing a song that seems to imply that she's hanging out with someone she wants to--you know--"lala" (an Ashlee-coined phrase, I believe). And, as one might suspect, this strange inconsistency reveals that neither Simpson nor Kahn are really thinking through the concept of the video -- and how it relates to the song.
With the video, Ashlee Simpson is trying to prove that she's really fun to hang out with because she's mean to other people who, she deems, suck. But, in one short take, even the concept of her being a cool friend to hang out with is slightly lost on us. Remember how she threw soft drink cups at annoying boys? It's not so black and white: in fact, while her friends are pushing her in a shopping cart, she even throws her soft drink cups in the air and they hit her friends. This--and the posture of putting down people who fall down--didn't make me want to hang out with Ashlee Simpson.
I suppose the odds of my potential friendship with Ashlee Simpson were against us from the start. I don't really like her voice. She's got the Frankensteinian jauntiness of Shakira without the awesome ab-rolling capabilities and, let's admit, she can't really dance as well as Shakira anyway. While I was a high school nerd who is still a nerd and doesn't like drinking soda, she has crowned herself the queen of teenage rebellion with her extra-large soft drink in hand. If your friends are supposed to relate to you, it's incumbent upon me to hint that I probably wouldn't relate to Ashlee Simpson. But I do find her kind of fascinating. The interest lies in the fact that she's so steeped in cliches that she fumbles in her attempts to execute them. She's the younger sister who dyed her hair black because she wanted to be different, but she still wants to be a pop star. She starts feuds with other starlets (i.e. Lindsay Lohan) because she starts hooking up with their boyfriends, but then wants their friendship back. There's something almost comforting about the fact that she is a kind of cultural figure that won't go away.
"Lala" solidifies Simpson's rather unenviable position. It's a shopworn look at the suburbs and that's precisely why it renews one's interest in the suburbs. It's almost as though "Lala" is the last straw to the suburban boredom of "Madame Bovary" and the popular "American Beauty"dictum that the suburbs aren't what they seem. I realize these are large works to compare a silly music video to -- obviously. But I think the comparison is emblematic of just how flat the rebellion against the suburbs is. It's now a really easy topic to dismantle, and its symbols have become almost anaesthetic. So we have to find different ways of observing it. What makes "Lala" as interesting to me is that Simpson is the perfect pop star to end the suburbia debate with a whimper. For no one attempts to rebel with more un-self-conscious self-consciousness than Ashlee Simpson. And that is precisely the problem with the argument against the suburbs: it doesn't acknowledge how cliche its position has become.
Artist: Ashlee Simpson
Song: "Lala" (Scroll down for "Lala" and its many streams)
Album: "Autobiography"
Director: Joseph Kahn
"Lala" begins with a standard suburban grid, some quick shots of girls hanging out, and then a closer view of a section of the grid. Soon, the camera closes in on Ashlee Simpson lazing about, and then takes in the shopworn symbols of the suburbs: a one-story house, power lines, trucks and minivans. To emphasize the terrain's superficiality, mirrors, glass, and chrome are glintz-ified. And after these quick-shot cliches, there comes a reward: there's a really beautiful shot of a slightly coiled, green water hose. It's simple and understated--almost obvious, but not quite. The hose is what made me think this video had potential to find the strange beauty of banality. I wanted to say that the colors sort of reminded me of Dan Graham's "Homes for America" and I kind of wanted it to have the sharp observation characteristic of a Stephen Shore photograph.
But that quickly seemed an inept comparison. The video has the fundamental flaw of not really know what it's doing. What ensues is Simpson hanging out with her girls, doing suburban teenage rebel-type stuff. They stomp on the roofs of minivans, they kick down garbage cans, and loiter in the parking lots of donut shops. They laugh at skaters who fall flat on their tricks. And Ashlee throws her soft drinks at annoying boys. While this felt a wee bit sophomoric, as these images flickered by, I decided I really liked the fact that Simpson isn't really trying to get the attention of a boy. And, it's pretty cool that she doesn't use the video to make herself out to be a foresaken victim. I like that she's hanging with her girls playing videogames, that after a party gets broken up by the cops, she leads her friends to the laundromat. That's all fine and good until you listen to the lyrics: she's singing a song that seems to imply that she's hanging out with someone she wants to--you know--"lala" (an Ashlee-coined phrase, I believe). And, as one might suspect, this strange inconsistency reveals that neither Simpson nor Kahn are really thinking through the concept of the video -- and how it relates to the song.
With the video, Ashlee Simpson is trying to prove that she's really fun to hang out with because she's mean to other people who, she deems, suck. But, in one short take, even the concept of her being a cool friend to hang out with is slightly lost on us. Remember how she threw soft drink cups at annoying boys? It's not so black and white: in fact, while her friends are pushing her in a shopping cart, she even throws her soft drink cups in the air and they hit her friends. This--and the posture of putting down people who fall down--didn't make me want to hang out with Ashlee Simpson.
I suppose the odds of my potential friendship with Ashlee Simpson were against us from the start. I don't really like her voice. She's got the Frankensteinian jauntiness of Shakira without the awesome ab-rolling capabilities and, let's admit, she can't really dance as well as Shakira anyway. While I was a high school nerd who is still a nerd and doesn't like drinking soda, she has crowned herself the queen of teenage rebellion with her extra-large soft drink in hand. If your friends are supposed to relate to you, it's incumbent upon me to hint that I probably wouldn't relate to Ashlee Simpson. But I do find her kind of fascinating. The interest lies in the fact that she's so steeped in cliches that she fumbles in her attempts to execute them. She's the younger sister who dyed her hair black because she wanted to be different, but she still wants to be a pop star. She starts feuds with other starlets (i.e. Lindsay Lohan) because she starts hooking up with their boyfriends, but then wants their friendship back. There's something almost comforting about the fact that she is a kind of cultural figure that won't go away.
"Lala" solidifies Simpson's rather unenviable position. It's a shopworn look at the suburbs and that's precisely why it renews one's interest in the suburbs. It's almost as though "Lala" is the last straw to the suburban boredom of "Madame Bovary" and the popular "American Beauty"dictum that the suburbs aren't what they seem. I realize these are large works to compare a silly music video to -- obviously. But I think the comparison is emblematic of just how flat the rebellion against the suburbs is. It's now a really easy topic to dismantle, and its symbols have become almost anaesthetic. So we have to find different ways of observing it. What makes "Lala" as interesting to me is that Simpson is the perfect pop star to end the suburbia debate with a whimper. For no one attempts to rebel with more un-self-conscious self-consciousness than Ashlee Simpson. And that is precisely the problem with the argument against the suburbs: it doesn't acknowledge how cliche its position has become.
posted by Melissa at 7:00 PM
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