A failure at defining “pseudo-feminist”?

Perhaps I’m missing the point, but I fail to understand exactly how The Magnetic Fields’ songs are “pseudo-feminist” because they fall short of the mark of really empowering women?  Or perhaps it’s part of a greater meta-point that I can never truly grasp how their songs are pseudo-feminist since I lack the proper plumbing.  Either way, I’m thoroughly disappointed in this post by Amanda Hess in Washington City Paper’s “The Sexist” blog.

First, I object to her characterization of the song “The Nun’s Litany” as pseudo-feminist because it “provides a ringing endorsement for expressing female sexual freedom as obtained by sex industry performance”.  As performed on the album Distortion, Shirley Simms’ flat, almost mechanical voice somehow mutes the song’s unspoken and heartbreaking revelation that trading one male-dominated yoke for another isn’t empowerment.  Songwriter Stephin Merritt’s world-weary bass fills in the blanks in a manner that Simms simply cannot.

Is Hess honestly trying to make a comparison between “California Girls” and Crime Mob’s “Stilletos (Pumps)“?  From my not so casual listening to TMF’s music, I’ve come to the conclusion that Stephin Merritt has two modes – painfully earnest and playfully cheeky (as in tongue planted firmly in).  Some of his songs show both sides of this dichotomy, as when Merritt writes (and sings) “I could make a career of being blue/I could dress in black and read Camus/Smoke clove cigarettes and drink
vermouth like I was 17/That would be a scream”.  He confronts the realization that, no matter how real the pain at losing a lover is, he’s unsure how to proceed without eventually falling squarely into the realm of the cliche.  On a slightly more abstract level, this is simply a variation on the trope, “There is nothing new under the sun”.

I digress.  I somehow find it unlikely that the diminutive and gay Merritt, whose affliction with hyperacusis makes him unable to stand percussion or audience applause onstage, has ever been in a fight in a bar or anywhere else.  I additionally find it not entirely unlikely that that the members of Crime Mob, whose ranks previously included a rapper with three solo efforts entitled Bitch Music as well as a convicted child molester, are perfectly capable of and likely to throw down on any given Saturday.

As I listen to “California Girls”, I picture Stephin Merritt as a slightly perverse and post-modern Brian Wilson, turning the Beach Boys/Spectorian “Wall of Sound” on its ear.  Rather than reveling in red-blooded, all-American fun, the song’s protagonist indulges a momentary, violent, and misanthropic fantasy with his/her “battle ax”.  I say “his/her” because of Merritt’s long history of gender-bending in his lyrics.  “Come Back from San Francisco” features a female vocalist singing the lyrics, “Should pretty boys in discos/Distract you from your novel/Remember I’m awful in love with you”.  Is the object of the singer’s affection bisexual, perhaps a male who enjoys the company of other men or a woman who bats for both teams?  Of course not.  Regardless of which member of the group is singing, the words are (probably) all Merritt’s.  Rather than indulging in the process of modifying the lyrics to suit her reality, Simms sings them as written without apology.

I think Amanda’s thinly veiled implication that Merritt is a misogynist, much like Jessica Hopper and Sasha Frere-Jones’ similarly misguided attempt to brand him a racist, falls apart under careful examination.  Her usually stellar writing makes little more sense in this instance than Joanna Krupa’s model-thin defense of her decision to pose in Playboy.  A lack of hyperbole and an inability to suspend disbelief do not a feminist make.