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chaosonwheelsHello friends! It's been a minute, but I'm here with a new media analysis! This time about music. Melanie Martinez's new album + movie came out recently and I had a lot of Thoughts about it.
A quick heads up: this post is going to be discussing a myriad of issues, such as eating disorders (bulimia specifically), rape and sexual assault, victim blaming, abusive behaviors like gaslighting and guilt tripping, and body shaming. If these things trigger you, you may want to sit this one out.
That being said, let's get into it.
I liked Martinez well enough once. I would never call myself a hardcore stan, but Sippy Cup and Soap were brief bops, and her cover of Toxic is still on one of my old 8tracks playlists. Obviously, we've been through my emo identity, and I've mentioned I'm a Lolita, so I could appreciate her aesthetic to a point as well. However, for those who don't keep up with pop trash, she was accused of rape by one of her ex-best friends back in 2017. I said rip, mentally cancelled her, and admittedly forgot about her. Nothing ended up happening with the allegations, as is the norm unfortunately. It ended up being kind of a messy deal, with the accuser being called out for sexual assault herself, fake posts circling about her admitting she lied...typical birdsite shit. With all the mess, the hype around the accusations pretty much died off and nothing satisfying came from it.
Fast forward to now, Martinez's new album, K-12, has come out with a movie attached, via the trend nowadays (thanks to Queen Bey), and my TL has been lit up about it. Some people have listened to it after two seconds and deemed it problematic trash, while others listened for two seconds and did the complete opposite. I'm a big proponent of watching things and making your own conclusions about it, but I'm still wary as fuck about Martinez for obvious reasons, so I learn about a sick website called cadence.moe that lets you watch Youtube without giving views, and watched the full 2-hour movie.
This is probably the only compliment I will give without critique: The visuals in this movie are absolutely fucking stunning. This is the most consistent compliment I've heard from various sites and reviews. I've done some reading and apparently this had a huge budget, and it shows. She's got a real talent for direction, I'll give her that. I don't know who designed and made the sets and costumes but I hope they got hella paid. A lot of love went into how this looks. Her aesthetics from Cry Baby are much tighter, and in my opinion, makes it much more obvious that the childish imagery is supposed to be a larger metaphor for society as a whole. One of the biggest critiques I saw about Martinez during her last era was her use of imagery reminiscent of dd/lg and the potential romanticizing of pedophilia, which I definitely sided with, despite the fact that I did also understand it was supposed to be a metaphor. While she's still using the aesthetic and metaphor in K-12, it's much harder for me to believe the characters being portrayed are supposed to be literal children, which, at times, was unclear in Cry Baby. While they're all dressed in floofy pink and blue outfits, they're also smoking weed throughout the movie/album and making out with each other. I appreciate her trying to make her artistic intention more clear (and low-key weep for humanity's dwindling skill in spotting metaphors.....using childish words/imagery to tackle adult issues isn't really a new and inspired one either? But I digress)
After the visuals though, everything else is pretty fucking hollow.
I put on .ink that K-12 is like "one of those really fancy cakes. Beautiful to look at, but nothing of real substance." That's basically it in a nutshell. Listening to the lyrics of the songs feel like reading my old middle school diaries, or myspace/gaia journals. I'm better than all those fake preppy girls, no one cares about me, #CutebutKindaPsycho!!!XDLOL, etc etc. It's where the metaphor starts to feel...lazy? Like you can make smart statements about society with childish imagery without being literally childish. Another thing that annoyed me was that the movie glosses over social justice issues with the confidence of someone seeing the Vagina Monologues once and leaving thinking they're #woke. It plops the issues in front of the viewer, says "Hey look this is a thing that's bad", then moves on without ever being addressed again or telling the viewer why it's bad in the first place. It's the equivalent of scrolling through your tumblr/twitter feed, seeing and reblogging a political post, and then moving on with your scrolling like it didn't have any effect. This whole album/movie is like an anthem to Performative Wokeness.
And that brings me to what I really want to talk about in this post: how abusers use the current concept of "unproblematic" to gain our trust.
There aren't a lot of songs on this album that I like. They're all okay, but the majority I wouldn't return to. One in particular caught my attention, called "Strawberry Shortcake". I watched Melanie's character, Cry Baby, lament about her developing body in the locker room. Listened to cliche lyrics like, "Wondering why I don't look like Barbie". Finally scoff when I get to the chorus and it reads,
"It's my fault,
It's my fault,
'cause I put icing on top
Now the boys want a taste of the strawberry shortcake
That's my bad,
That's my bad,
No one taught them not to grab
Now the boys want a taste of the strawberry shortcake"
Cry Baby is presented as a naked barbie doll with her bottom half as a giant decorated cake. Male students stuff their faces with pieces of it, and she can only watch with a sad face =(
Bruh.
The irony. The audacity. The fucking lack of self-awareness needed to create a (bare-minimum) song about consent and victim blaming and use imagery of assault, when you yourself have not only been accused of rape, but are literally on record saying the victim, "Never said no to what we chose to do together". While doing research into the assault allegations, trying to find out if it was ever resolved in some way, I found so many of Melanie's fans calling her accuser a liar, an attention seeker, doubting her because she got dates wrong, because she didn't go to the police, because she still hung out with her afterwards and didn't fight her off...Even going as far as invalidating her story because she has BPD, and therefore can't tell the truth. All that sound familiar at all? It's the exact language she's satirizing in the song. Was it just the boys that were taught not to grab, Melanie? You sure? I think you might've missed someone. Somebody make it make sense.
Her complete tone-deafness isn't accidental. In fact, it's run of the mill. The thing about Melanie Martinez, and everyone like her, is that they wholeheartedly believe in the concepts of feminism. They agree with the core values and understand them well enough to make songs, speeches, and artistic statements, and that's enough for the current masses to accept them as safe members of the community. And today, we are so desperate for community and safe spaces. We're all so tired of the death and abuse that surrounds us that we cling to anyone that says or acts even remotely relatable. We want to believe. I 100% get that. But this culture of entry-level feminism we've created, while it sounded like a good idea—why would it ever be a bad thing for feminism to be so easily accessible?—all it is is a breeding ground for abusers. By equating performance with praxis, we've allowed feminism to become a tool of capitalism and hegemony, instead of a tool of freedom and empowerment to all people. The number one thing all abusers know is how vulnerable we are right now. Whether they want adoration, attention, subservience, power, or something more sinister, they go after the vulnerable in our populations because they know we are dying for someone to honestly give a shit about us. Anyone with a platform like Melanie's can type 'gay rights', 'trans rights', 'black lives matter', or any variation of human rights exclamations from the comfort of their laptops, and people will drown them in likes. For the sake of our own survival and well-being, it should not be this easy to gain our trust. Anyone can say they're supportive of movements until those issues actually involve them and possibly require them to be accountable for their actions. Once feminism and other social theories become less about how the individual benefits and more about how it benefits everyone else, they're not so fun and marketable anymore. Abusers aren't here for work. They're here for status and instant gratification.
K-12 reflects this exactly. Cry Baby and her ideologies are sugary sprinkles of contradictions that reveal Melanie's true beliefs. In one scene, Cry Baby says, “Everyone deserves love” but the bully of the movie, Kelly, is depicted as a one-dimensional petty-villain throughout the entire film, who is ignored and abandoned in the end without sympathy or any option for growth at all. The song “Orange Juice” is supposed to be supportive of those with bulimia, and honestly has some of my favorite visuals in the film, preaching body positivity. However, both in K-12 and Cry Baby, Martinez turns around and has lyrics shaming women for getting plastic surgery and wearing makeup, and constantly depicts the character Cry Baby as being “different” (a.k.a better) than the blonde bimbo stereotypes she's surrounded with. At one point, a character literally refers to them as, “Plastic carbon copies”. One of the most insistent messages in K-12 is that we all need to wake up and question the reality presented around us. Yet those who criticize or don't like Martinez's work, even if they're fans, get gaslighting diss songs like “Piggyback”, “Show and Tell”, and “Fire Drill” thrown at them, where they're either depicted as trying to leech off of her fame, or being unappreciative of her “working her ass off”.
Once you look past the pastel sparkle of Martinez's glamour, you can clearly see the rotting cavities seeping through. Everyone deserves love...except you. We should all love our bodies...but by my standards, not yours. Question authority...but not me because I'm the only one you can trust, and if you doubt that you're dead to me. I hate to tell you, but if your feminism comes with terms and conditions, it's not real feminism. You're just selling your own ego.
I know that it's only easy for me to notice the truth because of my experiences. I've worked and studied in physical social justice spaces. I've seen first hand how they get hijacked by people just looking for power. I've protested and volunteered with these people, only for them to turn around and make ableist, racist, or body shaming remarks. My friends have histories of abusers just like Melanie, whose social justice bingo cards have perfect scores, and therefore no one believes they could be so awful. But if I didn't have those experiences, if I was still a lonely edgy teen dying to be seen, I'd be eating this shit up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. K-12 would be my favorite thing. The aesthetic, the accessible wokeness, the use of witchcraft and goth imagery as empowerment...it's like all my interests wrapped in one glittery, easy-to-digest package. I'd probably worship the ground Martinez walked on because she actually 'got' me and validated my thoughts and feelings. I understand that's her audience, and that's exactly why I'm concerned.
These young people look to her as an idol, an example to follow while they get their feet wet in the SJW pond. Like the radfems of Tumblr, she's presenting herself as a source of truth and information, when really she's just soaking her fans in the same biases and prejudices she thinks she's protesting against. And it absolutely worked. People have completely forgotten or ignored the allegations against her, allowing K-12 to rise to the charts and trend on Twitter. Her fans bent over backwards to “prove” her innocence, and continue to protect her from further mention of the allegations, as Martinez encourages them to.
It's honestly sad. There is no denying Martinez has talent. At the very least, her eye for visuals and direction is really fantastic. But it's such a shame that all that talent can't hide the ugliness waiting underneath. I always see it as such a waste. Don't ignore people's horrible actions, even if they're your idols. Hold them accountable. They deserve to grow fully too, and they can't if they refuse to acknowledge their own flaws. Don't help hide it from them. Martinez says it herself in the song I liked the best:
“Pretending everything's alright is detention.”
A quick heads up: this post is going to be discussing a myriad of issues, such as eating disorders (bulimia specifically), rape and sexual assault, victim blaming, abusive behaviors like gaslighting and guilt tripping, and body shaming. If these things trigger you, you may want to sit this one out.
That being said, let's get into it.
I liked Martinez well enough once. I would never call myself a hardcore stan, but Sippy Cup and Soap were brief bops, and her cover of Toxic is still on one of my old 8tracks playlists. Obviously, we've been through my emo identity, and I've mentioned I'm a Lolita, so I could appreciate her aesthetic to a point as well. However, for those who don't keep up with pop trash, she was accused of rape by one of her ex-best friends back in 2017. I said rip, mentally cancelled her, and admittedly forgot about her. Nothing ended up happening with the allegations, as is the norm unfortunately. It ended up being kind of a messy deal, with the accuser being called out for sexual assault herself, fake posts circling about her admitting she lied...typical birdsite shit. With all the mess, the hype around the accusations pretty much died off and nothing satisfying came from it.
Fast forward to now, Martinez's new album, K-12, has come out with a movie attached, via the trend nowadays (thanks to Queen Bey), and my TL has been lit up about it. Some people have listened to it after two seconds and deemed it problematic trash, while others listened for two seconds and did the complete opposite. I'm a big proponent of watching things and making your own conclusions about it, but I'm still wary as fuck about Martinez for obvious reasons, so I learn about a sick website called cadence.moe that lets you watch Youtube without giving views, and watched the full 2-hour movie.
This is probably the only compliment I will give without critique: The visuals in this movie are absolutely fucking stunning. This is the most consistent compliment I've heard from various sites and reviews. I've done some reading and apparently this had a huge budget, and it shows. She's got a real talent for direction, I'll give her that. I don't know who designed and made the sets and costumes but I hope they got hella paid. A lot of love went into how this looks. Her aesthetics from Cry Baby are much tighter, and in my opinion, makes it much more obvious that the childish imagery is supposed to be a larger metaphor for society as a whole. One of the biggest critiques I saw about Martinez during her last era was her use of imagery reminiscent of dd/lg and the potential romanticizing of pedophilia, which I definitely sided with, despite the fact that I did also understand it was supposed to be a metaphor. While she's still using the aesthetic and metaphor in K-12, it's much harder for me to believe the characters being portrayed are supposed to be literal children, which, at times, was unclear in Cry Baby. While they're all dressed in floofy pink and blue outfits, they're also smoking weed throughout the movie/album and making out with each other. I appreciate her trying to make her artistic intention more clear (and low-key weep for humanity's dwindling skill in spotting metaphors.....using childish words/imagery to tackle adult issues isn't really a new and inspired one either? But I digress)
After the visuals though, everything else is pretty fucking hollow.
I put on .ink that K-12 is like "one of those really fancy cakes. Beautiful to look at, but nothing of real substance." That's basically it in a nutshell. Listening to the lyrics of the songs feel like reading my old middle school diaries, or myspace/gaia journals. I'm better than all those fake preppy girls, no one cares about me, #CutebutKindaPsycho!!!XDLOL, etc etc. It's where the metaphor starts to feel...lazy? Like you can make smart statements about society with childish imagery without being literally childish. Another thing that annoyed me was that the movie glosses over social justice issues with the confidence of someone seeing the Vagina Monologues once and leaving thinking they're #woke. It plops the issues in front of the viewer, says "Hey look this is a thing that's bad", then moves on without ever being addressed again or telling the viewer why it's bad in the first place. It's the equivalent of scrolling through your tumblr/twitter feed, seeing and reblogging a political post, and then moving on with your scrolling like it didn't have any effect. This whole album/movie is like an anthem to Performative Wokeness.
And that brings me to what I really want to talk about in this post: how abusers use the current concept of "unproblematic" to gain our trust.
There aren't a lot of songs on this album that I like. They're all okay, but the majority I wouldn't return to. One in particular caught my attention, called "Strawberry Shortcake". I watched Melanie's character, Cry Baby, lament about her developing body in the locker room. Listened to cliche lyrics like, "Wondering why I don't look like Barbie". Finally scoff when I get to the chorus and it reads,
"It's my fault,
It's my fault,
'cause I put icing on top
Now the boys want a taste of the strawberry shortcake
That's my bad,
That's my bad,
No one taught them not to grab
Now the boys want a taste of the strawberry shortcake"
Cry Baby is presented as a naked barbie doll with her bottom half as a giant decorated cake. Male students stuff their faces with pieces of it, and she can only watch with a sad face =(
Bruh.
The irony. The audacity. The fucking lack of self-awareness needed to create a (bare-minimum) song about consent and victim blaming and use imagery of assault, when you yourself have not only been accused of rape, but are literally on record saying the victim, "Never said no to what we chose to do together". While doing research into the assault allegations, trying to find out if it was ever resolved in some way, I found so many of Melanie's fans calling her accuser a liar, an attention seeker, doubting her because she got dates wrong, because she didn't go to the police, because she still hung out with her afterwards and didn't fight her off...Even going as far as invalidating her story because she has BPD, and therefore can't tell the truth. All that sound familiar at all? It's the exact language she's satirizing in the song. Was it just the boys that were taught not to grab, Melanie? You sure? I think you might've missed someone. Somebody make it make sense.
Her complete tone-deafness isn't accidental. In fact, it's run of the mill. The thing about Melanie Martinez, and everyone like her, is that they wholeheartedly believe in the concepts of feminism. They agree with the core values and understand them well enough to make songs, speeches, and artistic statements, and that's enough for the current masses to accept them as safe members of the community. And today, we are so desperate for community and safe spaces. We're all so tired of the death and abuse that surrounds us that we cling to anyone that says or acts even remotely relatable. We want to believe. I 100% get that. But this culture of entry-level feminism we've created, while it sounded like a good idea—why would it ever be a bad thing for feminism to be so easily accessible?—all it is is a breeding ground for abusers. By equating performance with praxis, we've allowed feminism to become a tool of capitalism and hegemony, instead of a tool of freedom and empowerment to all people. The number one thing all abusers know is how vulnerable we are right now. Whether they want adoration, attention, subservience, power, or something more sinister, they go after the vulnerable in our populations because they know we are dying for someone to honestly give a shit about us. Anyone with a platform like Melanie's can type 'gay rights', 'trans rights', 'black lives matter', or any variation of human rights exclamations from the comfort of their laptops, and people will drown them in likes. For the sake of our own survival and well-being, it should not be this easy to gain our trust. Anyone can say they're supportive of movements until those issues actually involve them and possibly require them to be accountable for their actions. Once feminism and other social theories become less about how the individual benefits and more about how it benefits everyone else, they're not so fun and marketable anymore. Abusers aren't here for work. They're here for status and instant gratification.
K-12 reflects this exactly. Cry Baby and her ideologies are sugary sprinkles of contradictions that reveal Melanie's true beliefs. In one scene, Cry Baby says, “Everyone deserves love” but the bully of the movie, Kelly, is depicted as a one-dimensional petty-villain throughout the entire film, who is ignored and abandoned in the end without sympathy or any option for growth at all. The song “Orange Juice” is supposed to be supportive of those with bulimia, and honestly has some of my favorite visuals in the film, preaching body positivity. However, both in K-12 and Cry Baby, Martinez turns around and has lyrics shaming women for getting plastic surgery and wearing makeup, and constantly depicts the character Cry Baby as being “different” (a.k.a better) than the blonde bimbo stereotypes she's surrounded with. At one point, a character literally refers to them as, “Plastic carbon copies”. One of the most insistent messages in K-12 is that we all need to wake up and question the reality presented around us. Yet those who criticize or don't like Martinez's work, even if they're fans, get gaslighting diss songs like “Piggyback”, “Show and Tell”, and “Fire Drill” thrown at them, where they're either depicted as trying to leech off of her fame, or being unappreciative of her “working her ass off”.
Once you look past the pastel sparkle of Martinez's glamour, you can clearly see the rotting cavities seeping through. Everyone deserves love...except you. We should all love our bodies...but by my standards, not yours. Question authority...but not me because I'm the only one you can trust, and if you doubt that you're dead to me. I hate to tell you, but if your feminism comes with terms and conditions, it's not real feminism. You're just selling your own ego.
I know that it's only easy for me to notice the truth because of my experiences. I've worked and studied in physical social justice spaces. I've seen first hand how they get hijacked by people just looking for power. I've protested and volunteered with these people, only for them to turn around and make ableist, racist, or body shaming remarks. My friends have histories of abusers just like Melanie, whose social justice bingo cards have perfect scores, and therefore no one believes they could be so awful. But if I didn't have those experiences, if I was still a lonely edgy teen dying to be seen, I'd be eating this shit up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. K-12 would be my favorite thing. The aesthetic, the accessible wokeness, the use of witchcraft and goth imagery as empowerment...it's like all my interests wrapped in one glittery, easy-to-digest package. I'd probably worship the ground Martinez walked on because she actually 'got' me and validated my thoughts and feelings. I understand that's her audience, and that's exactly why I'm concerned.
These young people look to her as an idol, an example to follow while they get their feet wet in the SJW pond. Like the radfems of Tumblr, she's presenting herself as a source of truth and information, when really she's just soaking her fans in the same biases and prejudices she thinks she's protesting against. And it absolutely worked. People have completely forgotten or ignored the allegations against her, allowing K-12 to rise to the charts and trend on Twitter. Her fans bent over backwards to “prove” her innocence, and continue to protect her from further mention of the allegations, as Martinez encourages them to.
It's honestly sad. There is no denying Martinez has talent. At the very least, her eye for visuals and direction is really fantastic. But it's such a shame that all that talent can't hide the ugliness waiting underneath. I always see it as such a waste. Don't ignore people's horrible actions, even if they're your idols. Hold them accountable. They deserve to grow fully too, and they can't if they refuse to acknowledge their own flaws. Don't help hide it from them. Martinez says it herself in the song I liked the best:
“Pretending everything's alright is detention.”
no subject
Date: 2019-09-18 04:51 am (UTC)This is a beautiful essay. I don't know anything about Melanie Martinez but you absolutely nailed the patterns of abuser behavior here. Thank you. 💜♥️💜
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-18 06:01 am (UTC)the movie is pretty to look at, but that's all it has going for it. it's not coherent, the songs within are bland... and like you say, the messages don't really mean much.
I've learned to not trust anyone that ends up being notable for anything, after one case of trusting someone and learning they were just wearing a mask and they were being disgusting behind it. people are often absolutely not worth trusting. when you've got a spotlight on you and people adoring you, it's too easy to want anything bad you've done to be covered up. Melanie's a hypocrite, to be sure. I personally think it's far too late for her to ever turn around, but I guess you never really know. I think it's best to always err on the side of caution and remain as neutral as possible. it's so easy to gain notoriety these days, which to me, means it's more important to be wary.
the point you made about how you would have eaten up her stuff if you hadn't had your experiences is a great one to make, and helps to explain her blind following of younger people... but also just makes it more upsetting to see. :/
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 06:36 am (UTC)That's capitalism for you I guess =/