Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that every member of My Chemical Romance (past or present) is a cisgender man. That's kind of my point: I think the critic in question was feeling a mite of cognitive dissonance about enjoying what is, at the end of the day, a straightforward pop-punk album made by cishet white men intended for…
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that every member of My Chemical Romance (past or present) is a cisgender man. That's kind of my point: I think the critic in question was feeling a mite of cognitive dissonance about enjoying what is, at the end of the day, a straightforward pop-punk album made by cishet white men intended for consumption by angsty teenagers, so dressed it up by claiming (on, to my eyes, very thin evidence) that the band were REALLY doing something radical and subversive with regards to gender performance or whatever.
There's nothing wrong with straightforward pop-punk albums recorded by cishet white men intended for consumption by angsty teenagers (two of my favourite albums of all time meet that description exactly), and I don't know why critics have to tie themselves in knots pretending there's something deeper and more subversive going on rather than just admitting they enjoy the album for exactly what it is.
"I'm pretty sure that every member of My Chemical Romance (past or present) is a cisgender man"
This is totally irrelevant in regards to someone's ability to "promote gender nonconformance". What's more germane is that, in 2004, a guy with dyed hair and eyeliner walking in the city would get about a block before somebody yelled "faggot!" out of a pickup truck window.
If a rock band whose singer dyes his hair and wears eyeliner counts as radical subversive gender nonconformity, then My Chemical Romance were walking on well-trodden ground. Kiss, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Green Day, every hair metal band, every black metal band, innumerable punk bands, Manic Street Preachers, The Cure. I'm sorry, but I don't think a dude wearing eyeliner and his hair long in 2004 is the shocking countercultural statement you think it is. I'm no big fan of Nirvana but at least Kurt Cobain wore a dress the odd time.
Well this is my point: why are My Chemical Romance being given special brownie points for something which rock bands had been doing for decades prior?
I know that 2004 was a less enlightened era, but it was not the Dark Ages, and I don't believe that the average person would have been as shocked by the sight of a rock singer with long hair and eyeliner as you seem to think. And in 2007 I routinely walked around a Western city (in a country much less progressive than the US by any metric) wearing black clothes, long hair, eyeliner and nail polish, and have no recollection of ever having "faggot!" yelled at me (and yes, I'm a cis male, before you ask). So maybe your experience isn't quite as universal as you think.
Just so we're clear, these are the "mental gymnastics" you're referring to:
"But it’s the delivery of the penultimate line of the verse—'They make me do push-ups in drag'—that reverberates after the song ends. It’s a half-laugh, half-sob delivered with flair and a wink. The scattered references to queerness and gender-play—Gerard might sing a verse from the perspective of a girlish ex-lover—add a counterweight to the record’s overarching violence and masculinity, a self-referential nod to a frontman who would later publicly admit to struggles with gender identity. In a scene that was quickly turning to gendered hatred and dreams of femicide, these small rebellions against the rigidity of masculinity felt like the loosening of a pressure valve."
"In a scene that was quickly turning to gendered hatred and dreams of femicide" the liner notes for MCR's first album featured Gerard Way *apologising to his ex for writing so many songs about murdering her*. They weren't "rebelling" against the "rigidity of masculinity", they were wholeheartedly *revelling* in it.
To me, the critic's rhetorical position seems to boil down to "yes, they're an emo band who wrote problematic songs involving creepy violent revenge fantasies against the singer's ex-girlfriend - but the singer wore eyeliner* and once said that he feels in touch with his feminine side, so ACKCHUALLY they're woke af."
I think it's perfectly reasonable to characterise this as "mental gymnastics". At the time of the album's release, no one thought that Gerard Way's clothing or gender presentation negated the problematic attitudes towards women presented in his lyrics**. No one considered them a socially progressive band: they and the rest of their emo cohort were rightly criticised for their "gendered hatred and dreams of femicide". But the critic is stuck in a bind, because they really LIKE this album, "dreams of femicide" and all, so they have to contrive some reason why ACKCHUALLY it was socially progressive and we just didn't notice at the time.
Heaven forbid you just come out and say "I enjoy this album, questionable attitudes towards women notwithstanding." We can't have that, can we?
*As have dozens of rock frontmen for decades beforehand, none of whom received any special praise for subverting gender norms.
**Which is not to say that the worldview presented in these lyrics is Way's own.
From a cursory inspection, he may be referring to the songs "Drowning Lessons", "Our Lady of Sorrows" ("Just because my hand's around your throat...!"), "Early Sunsets over Monroeville" ("But does anyone notice? But does anyone care?/And if I had the guts to put this to your head/But would anything matter if you're already dead?/And should I be shocked now, by the last thing you said?/Before I pull this trigger, your eyes vacant and stained").
feel free to read the liner notes yourself. 12th paragraph: "To K: I'm sorry I wrote all this stuff about killing you, I hope the last song makes up for it."
I've read the liner notes. You're saying you got to the "problematic songs involving creepy violent revenge fantasies against the singer's ex-girlfriend" conclusion prior to your cursory inspection?
We can keep digging into this pile, but my point is that if we get to the bottom of it and it turns out you're maybe kinda sorta not as familiar with the music and your reasons for decrying it as "problematic" as you've implied, that implies you've got a bit of an axe to grind dontcha think?
I'm saying that if the singer explicitly states "many of our songs revolve around me murdering my ex-girlfriend" (and he does), I have no reason to doubt him. If the singer explicitly tells you, you don't actually NEED to be "familiar with the music" and go through the lyrics with a fine-toothed comb to get a sense of the songs are about: you can take him at his word. But even after a cursory look through the lyrics, they're hardly cryptic, the violence is pretty well spelled out.
I don't have any sort of "axe to grind": I've listened to a few My Chemical Romance songs and even learned to play one shortly after I got my first guitar. They're not exactly my cup of tea, but I don't hate them or think they're morally suspect. That's kind of my point: they're pretty much exactly as "problematic" or "misogynistic" or "toxic" as you'd expect from an emo/pop-punk band circa 2004; no more, no less (and I can think of plenty of bands in the same general scene with *far* more offensive lyrics and implied attitudes towards women). Hence why I find it laughable that this music critic is trying to pretend that they somehow transcended or subverted some of the offensive tropes the genre is known for when they fully embodied them - hell, even popularised them. The critic desperately wants for this My Chemical Romance album to have been socially progressive *by the standards of its era* in order to quell their cognitive dissonance, and is grasping at straws to prove as much. I find it rather telling that you, apparently a fan who is very well acquainted with their material, can no muster no better evidence for how socially progressive the band were by the standards of time than "well you know Gerard Way had long hair and wore eyeliner", which I already knew.
Sorry I slighted your favourite band, but it was really just the first example of the phenomenon I was describing that popped into my head and I didn't expect anyone to get so defensive about a pop-punk album that came out twenty years ago.
Trying to bring up the meta-invocation of "Freddie's policy on commenters who bring up trans issues in a certain way" feels distinctly different from bringing up trans issues.
"Avast, my fair companion, I would ruminate upon this subject with you, but for the tyrannical king and his ministers who have threatened all who do so with the dungeon and the hot iron."
Equating a policy about discussing a topic in the meta sense with actually discussing that topic seems like a reach and not a very good faith one to me, especially when presented in a sneering tone and a passive-aggressive "you can't help yourself".
People not being able to help themselves is the entire point. It's what caused the ban, it's what caused the "Heavier Hands" post from a week ago, it's why the most liked comment on this post manages to inject gender into... music reviews?
To be fair to the "MCR totes promoted gender nonconformance crowd," the band itself kinda leans into this. I remember reading a interview with Gerard Way where he was talking about, like, understanding women better because his role models were Bowie and various other gender nonconforming/feminine men. Which is, I think, something you can say when you're in a very masculine social setting. I'm sure some people were mean about him being insufficiently masculine. I'm also pretty sure those people were other boys/men who were mean, but not particularly scandalized by a guy in eyeliner.
Part of me thinks it's a little silly to look at emo bands as being or encouraging gender nonconformance, since (as you said) dudes in bands had been wearing eyeliner for decades. Another part of me that wants easy radical points feels bad that it gets harder and harder to do the gender nonconforming thing as time goes on. I wear a tie on occasion; give me cool points, even though Marlene Diedrich wore a full suit a hundred years ago!
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that every member of My Chemical Romance (past or present) is a cisgender man. That's kind of my point: I think the critic in question was feeling a mite of cognitive dissonance about enjoying what is, at the end of the day, a straightforward pop-punk album made by cishet white men intended for consumption by angsty teenagers, so dressed it up by claiming (on, to my eyes, very thin evidence) that the band were REALLY doing something radical and subversive with regards to gender performance or whatever.
There's nothing wrong with straightforward pop-punk albums recorded by cishet white men intended for consumption by angsty teenagers (two of my favourite albums of all time meet that description exactly), and I don't know why critics have to tie themselves in knots pretending there's something deeper and more subversive going on rather than just admitting they enjoy the album for exactly what it is.
"I'm pretty sure that every member of My Chemical Romance (past or present) is a cisgender man"
This is totally irrelevant in regards to someone's ability to "promote gender nonconformance". What's more germane is that, in 2004, a guy with dyed hair and eyeliner walking in the city would get about a block before somebody yelled "faggot!" out of a pickup truck window.
If a rock band whose singer dyes his hair and wears eyeliner counts as radical subversive gender nonconformity, then My Chemical Romance were walking on well-trodden ground. Kiss, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Green Day, every hair metal band, every black metal band, innumerable punk bands, Manic Street Preachers, The Cure. I'm sorry, but I don't think a dude wearing eyeliner and his hair long in 2004 is the shocking countercultural statement you think it is. I'm no big fan of Nirvana but at least Kurt Cobain wore a dress the odd time.
> Kiss, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, The Cure
Dress like them and people would yell "faggot!" at you as well. Source: I was there, people yelled "faggot!" at me.
Well this is my point: why are My Chemical Romance being given special brownie points for something which rock bands had been doing for decades prior?
I know that 2004 was a less enlightened era, but it was not the Dark Ages, and I don't believe that the average person would have been as shocked by the sight of a rock singer with long hair and eyeliner as you seem to think. And in 2007 I routinely walked around a Western city (in a country much less progressive than the US by any metric) wearing black clothes, long hair, eyeliner and nail polish, and have no recollection of ever having "faggot!" yelled at me (and yes, I'm a cis male, before you ask). So maybe your experience isn't quite as universal as you think.
Just so we're clear, these are the "mental gymnastics" you're referring to:
"But it’s the delivery of the penultimate line of the verse—'They make me do push-ups in drag'—that reverberates after the song ends. It’s a half-laugh, half-sob delivered with flair and a wink. The scattered references to queerness and gender-play—Gerard might sing a verse from the perspective of a girlish ex-lover—add a counterweight to the record’s overarching violence and masculinity, a self-referential nod to a frontman who would later publicly admit to struggles with gender identity. In a scene that was quickly turning to gendered hatred and dreams of femicide, these small rebellions against the rigidity of masculinity felt like the loosening of a pressure valve."
Yes, exactly, and I'm not buying it.
"In a scene that was quickly turning to gendered hatred and dreams of femicide" the liner notes for MCR's first album featured Gerard Way *apologising to his ex for writing so many songs about murdering her*. They weren't "rebelling" against the "rigidity of masculinity", they were wholeheartedly *revelling* in it.
To me, the critic's rhetorical position seems to boil down to "yes, they're an emo band who wrote problematic songs involving creepy violent revenge fantasies against the singer's ex-girlfriend - but the singer wore eyeliner* and once said that he feels in touch with his feminine side, so ACKCHUALLY they're woke af."
I think it's perfectly reasonable to characterise this as "mental gymnastics". At the time of the album's release, no one thought that Gerard Way's clothing or gender presentation negated the problematic attitudes towards women presented in his lyrics**. No one considered them a socially progressive band: they and the rest of their emo cohort were rightly criticised for their "gendered hatred and dreams of femicide". But the critic is stuck in a bind, because they really LIKE this album, "dreams of femicide" and all, so they have to contrive some reason why ACKCHUALLY it was socially progressive and we just didn't notice at the time.
Heaven forbid you just come out and say "I enjoy this album, questionable attitudes towards women notwithstanding." We can't have that, can we?
*As have dozens of rock frontmen for decades beforehand, none of whom received any special praise for subverting gender norms.
**Which is not to say that the worldview presented in these lyrics is Way's own.
"apologising to his ex for writing so many songs about murdering her"
Uh huh. Which song off IBYMB is about him murdering his ex again?
From a cursory inspection, he may be referring to the songs "Drowning Lessons", "Our Lady of Sorrows" ("Just because my hand's around your throat...!"), "Early Sunsets over Monroeville" ("But does anyone notice? But does anyone care?/And if I had the guts to put this to your head/But would anything matter if you're already dead?/And should I be shocked now, by the last thing you said?/Before I pull this trigger, your eyes vacant and stained").
feel free to read the liner notes yourself. 12th paragraph: "To K: I'm sorry I wrote all this stuff about killing you, I hope the last song makes up for it."
https://stitchesandgrooves.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/my-chemical-romance-i-brought-you-my-bullets-you-brought-me-your-love-insert-2.jpg
I've read the liner notes. You're saying you got to the "problematic songs involving creepy violent revenge fantasies against the singer's ex-girlfriend" conclusion prior to your cursory inspection?
We can keep digging into this pile, but my point is that if we get to the bottom of it and it turns out you're maybe kinda sorta not as familiar with the music and your reasons for decrying it as "problematic" as you've implied, that implies you've got a bit of an axe to grind dontcha think?
I'm saying that if the singer explicitly states "many of our songs revolve around me murdering my ex-girlfriend" (and he does), I have no reason to doubt him. If the singer explicitly tells you, you don't actually NEED to be "familiar with the music" and go through the lyrics with a fine-toothed comb to get a sense of the songs are about: you can take him at his word. But even after a cursory look through the lyrics, they're hardly cryptic, the violence is pretty well spelled out.
I don't have any sort of "axe to grind": I've listened to a few My Chemical Romance songs and even learned to play one shortly after I got my first guitar. They're not exactly my cup of tea, but I don't hate them or think they're morally suspect. That's kind of my point: they're pretty much exactly as "problematic" or "misogynistic" or "toxic" as you'd expect from an emo/pop-punk band circa 2004; no more, no less (and I can think of plenty of bands in the same general scene with *far* more offensive lyrics and implied attitudes towards women). Hence why I find it laughable that this music critic is trying to pretend that they somehow transcended or subverted some of the offensive tropes the genre is known for when they fully embodied them - hell, even popularised them. The critic desperately wants for this My Chemical Romance album to have been socially progressive *by the standards of its era* in order to quell their cognitive dissonance, and is grasping at straws to prove as much. I find it rather telling that you, apparently a fan who is very well acquainted with their material, can no muster no better evidence for how socially progressive the band were by the standards of time than "well you know Gerard Way had long hair and wore eyeliner", which I already knew.
Sorry I slighted your favourite band, but it was really just the first example of the phenomenon I was describing that popped into my head and I didn't expect anyone to get so defensive about a pop-punk album that came out twenty years ago.
>This is totally irrelevant
It absolutely is if you're trying to invoke Freddie's ban on commenters discussing trans issues, which I clearly and emphatically wasn't doing.
And yet you managed to bring up trans issues anyway! You really can't help yourself!
Please show me where I brought up trans issues. This is news to me.
> It absolutely is if you're trying to invoke Freddie's ban on commenters discussing trans issues
Trying to bring up the meta-invocation of "Freddie's policy on commenters who bring up trans issues in a certain way" feels distinctly different from bringing up trans issues.
Is this comment bringing up trans issues?
"Avast, my fair companion, I would ruminate upon this subject with you, but for the tyrannical king and his ministers who have threatened all who do so with the dungeon and the hot iron."
Sure feels like bringing something up to me.
Equating a policy about discussing a topic in the meta sense with actually discussing that topic seems like a reach and not a very good faith one to me, especially when presented in a sneering tone and a passive-aggressive "you can't help yourself".
But let's agree to disagree.
And if I'm wrong on this, I'll go on record as saying that Freddie can ban me whenever he wants for violating the trans comments policy.
People not being able to help themselves is the entire point. It's what caused the ban, it's what caused the "Heavier Hands" post from a week ago, it's why the most liked comment on this post manages to inject gender into... music reviews?
To be fair to the "MCR totes promoted gender nonconformance crowd," the band itself kinda leans into this. I remember reading a interview with Gerard Way where he was talking about, like, understanding women better because his role models were Bowie and various other gender nonconforming/feminine men. Which is, I think, something you can say when you're in a very masculine social setting. I'm sure some people were mean about him being insufficiently masculine. I'm also pretty sure those people were other boys/men who were mean, but not particularly scandalized by a guy in eyeliner.
Part of me thinks it's a little silly to look at emo bands as being or encouraging gender nonconformance, since (as you said) dudes in bands had been wearing eyeliner for decades. Another part of me that wants easy radical points feels bad that it gets harder and harder to do the gender nonconforming thing as time goes on. I wear a tie on occasion; give me cool points, even though Marlene Diedrich wore a full suit a hundred years ago!