Lindsay Lohan
"Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)"
Director: Lindsay Lohan
--------
"A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!"
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Voiceless.
Lindsay Lohan’s foray into the public spotlight as the infectious reprise of Hallie Parker/Annie James in Disney’s remake of “The Parent Trap” defied expectations (i.e. my mom’s) that Hayley Mills’s original double-billing could be matched with someone of equally adorable British-ness and scrappy American-ness. The 1998 good-natured, family-oriented confection gave Lohan the opportunity to strut her young, mass-market potential and radiant red locks, and was a springboard that catapulted her into the wide, deep pool of celebrity-dom. Since 1998, Lohan has blossomed and shrunk and almost-normalized; been linked to the arms of Wilmer Valderrama, Aaron Carter, Johnny Knoxville, Jared Leto, and purportedly Bruce Willis; been accused of using cocaine, has admitted to smoking pot, and, somewhat notoriously fell victim to paparazzi-directed road rage on the streets of L.A. (one street, Robertson Blvd., to be exact). And during Lohan’s trials and tribulations, every step of the way and with tooth and nail, fame has caught and clung to the young starlet’s life with a vengeance. It was interesting, then, that just as the first onslaught of fame was mounting, her career beginning to flourish, she bit her metaphorical thumb by singing in her ampless, self-centered 2002 pop ditty “Rumors” (off of “Speak”): “Why can't they back up off me? Why can't they let me live? / I'm gonna do it my way, take this for just what it is.”
Aspiring to Sinatra, she has been doing it her way and, lately, doing it Lindsay’s way not only includes singing and acting, but, as evidenced in one of her latest music videos, “Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father),” it also includes what every Holly-would wishes she could do too: directing. Of course, “Confessions,” a single off of her sophomore effort “A Little More Personal (Raw)” and named a little too closely after her 2004 movie, “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” comes from a personal place—-the estrangement of her father. Thus, it seemed to make sense that this child star has the knowingness and intimacy of experience to let the song and its moving-image companions unfurl. The jaded look and gravitas of the video led me to believe that Lohan wanted her video to be art with a message, so, I continued to watch as, in accordance with her sad song, she stacked her directorial deck with the storyline of her childhood. Cast in shabby chic, brooding, almost tint-colored production, we see the scenes of a broken home: in the living room, a careless, banker-y father argues with the mother threatening to take the kids, in an apparently dilapidated bathroom (with a bathtub full of water) Lohan cries and lies in wait for the results, and, in a seemingly charmed bedroom, her sister bangs against the door, tears streaming down the face. But here’s the kicker: the action’s happening in a set of department store windows, fodder for the world to see.
Even with the torment of fatherly abandonment apparently taking center stage, it doesn’t feel like that’s Lohan’s point. With frayed minimalism and arty filters, the point instead—-and made a bit obviously-—is that Lohan is always being watched, that her life is theater, and that her privacy is always withheld; a point that reinforces the idea that Lohan’s musical career has only one trick up its sleeve. With high production value, and a good dose of extras doing their best to be curious, Lohan overlays the concept and makes it even more unappealing, even less subtle with metaphors and symbols that she pushes into overtime. It’s a little like a bad version of Nan Goldin doing a Tina Barney-esque household portrait. The device of putting Lohan in a down-and-out, shop window loo feels indulgent and tired, even as it hopes to have some claim to invention. Lohan, her mother and her sister (the latter two played by actresses) cling to their rosaries in desperate yet out-of-place wishes for salvation, which feels almost super-religious. And then we see Lohan dressed up as a disappointed princess in three different poofy outfits that allow her and her alone to navigate the different store windows—because the spotlight’s on her. There’s the sense that Lohan is trying to telegraph her audience with her outfits, trying to say, Look, I have all these pretty clothes, but, in light of a neglectful father, they don’t really mean anything. But, of course, they do. It seems that Lohan wants to convey the idea that no matter how famous you might be, broken homes still put you in a bad situation. But what eeks me about their placement is that their lavish materials, bejeweled extravagance, and yards of tulle automatically claim that there’s something about this girl singing—she’s charmed somehow, she’s special.
Eventually, Lohan’s special-ness becomes the fulcrum for the video. Because only she has the power to sashay into these different rooms, she has purposely directed herself into isolation, where she can’t or won’t connect with any of the other players in the video, not even when her sister clings to her leg for consolation. Toward the end of the video, we see Lohan belting it out in her bathroom as pictures of the family-that-was magically float to the windows, and then--the climax--the windows shatter with defiance. Instead of this moment being powerful and paradigm-shifting, it confuses the question of Lohan’s ever-watched-ness; there’s not enough ambiguity in the subsequent scenes to make it an ambiguously useful turn. Instead, they provide more evidence for the feeling that Lohan has used the video as a means of demonstrating her own acting abilities – crying on cue, having emotive fits. Lohan has hoped to make something interesting, something arty, that could have displayed her artistic depth and as an opportunity to have us take her more seriously as a musical artist.
But, for Lohan’s music, the point isn’t depth; it’s about star-power. And, it’s true, Lohan’s star-power is absolutely undeniable and, like it or not, unavoidable. It is from this hypnotic quality that Lohan keeps attracting fans and gossip-mongers, which has in turn also provided a fruitful terrain for Lohan herself to put to work. She does want to get a little more personal, doesn’t she? What has become most interesting about Lindsay Lohan-as-chanteuse is that she sings about microscopic experiences enjoyed by a miniscule portion of the population. The topics for Lohan’s music, especially her singles, all have something to do with her fame, her attempts to repel the uglier parts of fame, but her obvious desire to share her experience of fame. Here’s the rub: if she doesn’t want people to be obsessed with her fame, why doesn’t she stop obsessing about it? She targets tabloids and their readers as the people who add an extra dimension of misery to her life, but by trying to trump this devil’s bargain with fame by using gossip and star-gazing as a subject to sing about, Lohan ultimately can never stray from it.
Lohan’s talents as an actress are broad-ranged and like the rest of the world, I know her acting career is going somewhere. I was enthralled by her dead-on performance of high school/girl confusion in “Mean Girls” and I’m eager to see how she fares in “Bobby,” “Fashonistas” and “A Prairie Home Companion.” But Lohan’s career as a singer-songwriter gets short shrift as a result; it feels like an add-on that pumps more money into the LL Rocks empire. Indeed, the domain name of her official website gives us a clue as to what precisely her favorite subject is. In her musical endeavors, she never connects her subjects to a larger swath of what’s generally human, and she isn’t able to give voice to the voiceless or inject a bit of normalness to her lyrical and visual content. Currently, and especially as evidenced through “Confessions” the video, Lohan’s music career reeks of self-indulgence, self-flattery and self-congratulation and in this video is she taking herself—and directing herself—too seriously. But there’s a place for her in our audio-visual culture because she already has all the fame in the world, and she most certainly has the means with which to sing about it.
"Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)"
Director: Lindsay Lohan
--------
"A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!"
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Voiceless.
Lindsay Lohan’s foray into the public spotlight as the infectious reprise of Hallie Parker/Annie James in Disney’s remake of “The Parent Trap” defied expectations (i.e. my mom’s) that Hayley Mills’s original double-billing could be matched with someone of equally adorable British-ness and scrappy American-ness. The 1998 good-natured, family-oriented confection gave Lohan the opportunity to strut her young, mass-market potential and radiant red locks, and was a springboard that catapulted her into the wide, deep pool of celebrity-dom. Since 1998, Lohan has blossomed and shrunk and almost-normalized; been linked to the arms of Wilmer Valderrama, Aaron Carter, Johnny Knoxville, Jared Leto, and purportedly Bruce Willis; been accused of using cocaine, has admitted to smoking pot, and, somewhat notoriously fell victim to paparazzi-directed road rage on the streets of L.A. (one street, Robertson Blvd., to be exact). And during Lohan’s trials and tribulations, every step of the way and with tooth and nail, fame has caught and clung to the young starlet’s life with a vengeance. It was interesting, then, that just as the first onslaught of fame was mounting, her career beginning to flourish, she bit her metaphorical thumb by singing in her ampless, self-centered 2002 pop ditty “Rumors” (off of “Speak”): “Why can't they back up off me? Why can't they let me live? / I'm gonna do it my way, take this for just what it is.”
Aspiring to Sinatra, she has been doing it her way and, lately, doing it Lindsay’s way not only includes singing and acting, but, as evidenced in one of her latest music videos, “Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father),” it also includes what every Holly-would wishes she could do too: directing. Of course, “Confessions,” a single off of her sophomore effort “A Little More Personal (Raw)” and named a little too closely after her 2004 movie, “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” comes from a personal place—-the estrangement of her father. Thus, it seemed to make sense that this child star has the knowingness and intimacy of experience to let the song and its moving-image companions unfurl. The jaded look and gravitas of the video led me to believe that Lohan wanted her video to be art with a message, so, I continued to watch as, in accordance with her sad song, she stacked her directorial deck with the storyline of her childhood. Cast in shabby chic, brooding, almost tint-colored production, we see the scenes of a broken home: in the living room, a careless, banker-y father argues with the mother threatening to take the kids, in an apparently dilapidated bathroom (with a bathtub full of water) Lohan cries and lies in wait for the results, and, in a seemingly charmed bedroom, her sister bangs against the door, tears streaming down the face. But here’s the kicker: the action’s happening in a set of department store windows, fodder for the world to see.
Even with the torment of fatherly abandonment apparently taking center stage, it doesn’t feel like that’s Lohan’s point. With frayed minimalism and arty filters, the point instead—-and made a bit obviously-—is that Lohan is always being watched, that her life is theater, and that her privacy is always withheld; a point that reinforces the idea that Lohan’s musical career has only one trick up its sleeve. With high production value, and a good dose of extras doing their best to be curious, Lohan overlays the concept and makes it even more unappealing, even less subtle with metaphors and symbols that she pushes into overtime. It’s a little like a bad version of Nan Goldin doing a Tina Barney-esque household portrait. The device of putting Lohan in a down-and-out, shop window loo feels indulgent and tired, even as it hopes to have some claim to invention. Lohan, her mother and her sister (the latter two played by actresses) cling to their rosaries in desperate yet out-of-place wishes for salvation, which feels almost super-religious. And then we see Lohan dressed up as a disappointed princess in three different poofy outfits that allow her and her alone to navigate the different store windows—because the spotlight’s on her. There’s the sense that Lohan is trying to telegraph her audience with her outfits, trying to say, Look, I have all these pretty clothes, but, in light of a neglectful father, they don’t really mean anything. But, of course, they do. It seems that Lohan wants to convey the idea that no matter how famous you might be, broken homes still put you in a bad situation. But what eeks me about their placement is that their lavish materials, bejeweled extravagance, and yards of tulle automatically claim that there’s something about this girl singing—she’s charmed somehow, she’s special.
Eventually, Lohan’s special-ness becomes the fulcrum for the video. Because only she has the power to sashay into these different rooms, she has purposely directed herself into isolation, where she can’t or won’t connect with any of the other players in the video, not even when her sister clings to her leg for consolation. Toward the end of the video, we see Lohan belting it out in her bathroom as pictures of the family-that-was magically float to the windows, and then--the climax--the windows shatter with defiance. Instead of this moment being powerful and paradigm-shifting, it confuses the question of Lohan’s ever-watched-ness; there’s not enough ambiguity in the subsequent scenes to make it an ambiguously useful turn. Instead, they provide more evidence for the feeling that Lohan has used the video as a means of demonstrating her own acting abilities – crying on cue, having emotive fits. Lohan has hoped to make something interesting, something arty, that could have displayed her artistic depth and as an opportunity to have us take her more seriously as a musical artist.
But, for Lohan’s music, the point isn’t depth; it’s about star-power. And, it’s true, Lohan’s star-power is absolutely undeniable and, like it or not, unavoidable. It is from this hypnotic quality that Lohan keeps attracting fans and gossip-mongers, which has in turn also provided a fruitful terrain for Lohan herself to put to work. She does want to get a little more personal, doesn’t she? What has become most interesting about Lindsay Lohan-as-chanteuse is that she sings about microscopic experiences enjoyed by a miniscule portion of the population. The topics for Lohan’s music, especially her singles, all have something to do with her fame, her attempts to repel the uglier parts of fame, but her obvious desire to share her experience of fame. Here’s the rub: if she doesn’t want people to be obsessed with her fame, why doesn’t she stop obsessing about it? She targets tabloids and their readers as the people who add an extra dimension of misery to her life, but by trying to trump this devil’s bargain with fame by using gossip and star-gazing as a subject to sing about, Lohan ultimately can never stray from it.
Lohan’s talents as an actress are broad-ranged and like the rest of the world, I know her acting career is going somewhere. I was enthralled by her dead-on performance of high school/girl confusion in “Mean Girls” and I’m eager to see how she fares in “Bobby,” “Fashonistas” and “A Prairie Home Companion.” But Lohan’s career as a singer-songwriter gets short shrift as a result; it feels like an add-on that pumps more money into the LL Rocks empire. Indeed, the domain name of her official website gives us a clue as to what precisely her favorite subject is. In her musical endeavors, she never connects her subjects to a larger swath of what’s generally human, and she isn’t able to give voice to the voiceless or inject a bit of normalness to her lyrical and visual content. Currently, and especially as evidenced through “Confessions” the video, Lohan’s music career reeks of self-indulgence, self-flattery and self-congratulation and in this video is she taking herself—and directing herself—too seriously. But there’s a place for her in our audio-visual culture because she already has all the fame in the world, and she most certainly has the means with which to sing about it.
posted by Melissa at 1:02 PM
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