fourfour

The diva chain

 

Not to incite a stan war or anything (HAHA, I WOULD LOVE THAT), but the practice of female singers being asked to comment on their peers (or taking it upon themselves to do so) is endlessly fascinating. (Is it sexist to play women off of each other? It it bitchy for women to take the bait? Is it sexist to think that they're bitchy?) So here are a bunch of clips of divas talking about divas. I gave myself an organizational rule when assembling this: The person speaking in each clip must have been talked about in the preceding clip.

Everything amazing in Céline: 3 Boys and a New Show

How could I resist? How could you?

fourfour = 5

I started fourfour on May 31, 2005, and I figure that the fifth anniversary of this blog is an occasion that calls for a look back. Surveying 1,116 posts that have appeared on a single blog over the course of five years is setting yourself up for looking at a whole lot of nothing, but regardless of how foolhardy my time investment has been, clearly this space has mattered to me. I'm grateful that in the rare cases that I feel like I have something that should really get out there, it almost always does. I'm grateful that I can make some money (a modest freelance wage, really) saying exactly what I think needs to be said on my terms. I'm grateful for the work/interview/interpersonal opportunities my work here has presented to me. I'm grateful that people seem to care about what I have to say, for however temporarily (I've heard, "I used to read your blog..." enough times to make me feel like I'm being oversensitive by finding those words offensive). I've always said that I like to have something to show for my time (I'm very material in that respect) and so the most I'll concede after looking at five year's worth of work is that it's been a whole lot of something.

Let it never be said that I don't know how to throw myself a party. The verdict on this blog's best offerings is probably none of my business -- I wouldn't even know how to call that if I had to. However, for the sake of retrospect, I can share with you what the most satisfying posts of the past five years were from the perspective of the person who created them and received feedback on them. My Top 20 is below.

The joy of Céline

As a postscript to last week's Céline Dion Is Still Amazing video, here are some shots of various audience members in rapture that I collected while gathering clips from Céline Through the Eyes of the World and the Taking Chances Tour DVD. Really, these people are awesome enough to make me want to start a Tumblr on her fans. People of Céline would be to People of Walmart what Red Lobster is to Long John Silver's. I just know it!

Anyway, these are presented without my commentary. I think you'll agree that the commentary displayed on these people's faces is commentary enough. Glowstick guy beckons you in...

 

Céline Dion is still amazing

The feature-length documentary Céline Through the Eyes of the World arrived on DVD last week with an additional hour of footage (!!!) and to little fanfare. I find that mystifying as, it contains most of the insanity you see above (I grabbed some other stuff from the simultaneous release of the Taking Chances World Tour DVD). I can't believe that someone hasn't already made this! Anyway, as promised, above is the official sequel to my Céline Dion Is Amazing video. Time is only going to get kinder to her as she enters the throes batty-old-ladydom. Get used to this kind of thing -- it isn't going anywhere (except crazy!).

Céline: Through the eyes of her face

I told you that Céline Dion is amazing, and I was not kidding. Her new documentary film, Céline: Through the Eyes of the World is two more hours in support of my thesis (it will also make great, great material for another video like Céline Dion Is Amazing whenever it hits DVD - believe me, I'm already putting it together in my head). This film finds her trotting the globe on her Taking Chances World Tour, stopping at key destinations to perform, but also to visit Nelson Mandela's former prison cell (where she winces), a concentration camp (where she weeps), a white-lion pride (whose one cub smells her son's stringy, Rob Zombie-movie hair), Sumo champs and Muhammad Ali (whom she gently but grandly kisses as though he's a statue made of ash). She feeds black South Africans couscous. She meets with a paraplegic on a respirator and tells her, "You look great!" There is enough big hair and bigger, flowing apparel to make this thing a camp classic on sight. If you think Céline: Through the Eyes of the World might be something you'll enjoy, I've got news for you: it is.

The eyes of the world are apparently covered by rose-tinted glasses, because Céline is portrayed as nothing less than a saint: she's a powerhouse performer who frets when her voice is pushed beyond delivering its melismatic grandiosity, and who still finds time to tend to her fans. Her driver talks about how he’s never met an international superstar who’ll stick around to sign 300 autographs after a show/long day – and he'll have you know, he’s met a lot of international superstars! We're bombarded with testimonials from fans around the globe ("It might sound weird to hear an Arab woman say this, but Céline Dion is amazing!" "It was one of the greatest nights in whole my life!"). My favorite of which finds a grown woman openly weeping on Australian TV after Céline had to cancel a Brisbane show: "It was actually a present for my auntie! [voice breaks] We’ve been planning it for three months!”

Any normal person would be hard-pressed to live up to such reverence, but if there's anything World has to teach us, it's that Céline is not normal. The film is spiced with her hamminess - from a weird, improv version of "Blue Suede Shoes" complete with a penguin walk to a manic scat-singing all the way through her show as she goes over its blocking step-by-step, moving platform-by-moving platform with her choreographer. She puts crudité under her lip on a boat and claims "I'm having an allergic reaction!" She leads her "team" in a uniform table pound-along to provide musical accompaniment to her son's rendition of "We Will Rock You."

When she is earnest, she is just as silly. (During a press conference in Shanghai someone asks her to give a statement on "future China power," causing her to pull out of her ass: "You follow your dreams, you follow your heart. If you follow your heart, I don’t think you can go wrong.") A discussion on her security team's positioning as she leaves the stage and quickly greets her fans is so halting, it seems to require every neuron she can muster: "I don’t want to walk and he decides to speed." In one of several scenes showing just how nice this woman is (or at least, how nice she can make you believe she is), she gets misty after meeting with a Make a Wish Foundation kid and his mother, who gave him a life-saving kidney. "He just gave this to me," she tells her husband moments after, holding a teddy bear. "I’m keeping it for sure!" I get the feeling that quite a few teddy bears have passed through her life with much grimmer fates.

The grim fates of teddy bears: that's about as subtextually dark as World gets. This film is the perfect cinematic translation of Céline's musical schmaltz (although, in a multi-sensory medium, said schmaltz feels a lot more absurd, thus compelling). It is fraught and highly emotional, yet you get the feeling that nothing much is at stake. Céline's music swells and pulls the heartstrings; Céline the person tours the globe and touches hearts. Incidentally, being part documentary and part concert film, World is full of Céline's music. At this point, I tolerate it well since it allows her to display her more entertaining calling as an entertainer: the role of batty old lady. To me, her "art" is like the drugs my boyfriend sells to keep me in Adrienne Vittadini and Chanel Nine boots. I understand the game, sometimes.

Along with the effusive joy, the histrionic gasps at life experiences and the gushing, overstated appreciation of just about everything ("Thank you for giving your soul!” she tells her team on the last night of the tour), the potential peril here is similarly insignificant. Céline frets over how to address the Czech people, she cries actual tears over her son's lost stuffed lamb (don't worry: they find it) and she sulks when her voice gives out from overuse. That's right, the film's main source of drama regards her main source of drama. Don't worry, though: she has the finest doctors to help her sort everything out. They keep her fantasy planet of endless positivity spinning. Céline's world may be impossible and silly, but believe me: it's a hell of a place to visit.

Ridicted

I'm sick and otherwise distracted, so I'm gonna hand it (whatever "it" means) over to Tracie and direct you to her Jezebel post on her 15 Favorite Most Ridiculous Women in pop culture. AKA "15 Women Gay Men Love" aka my heroes. It's a nice rough guide to the crazy ladies of entertainment (a passion of mine), and I'm not just saying that because she used a few videos I cut as supporting evidence. Go laugh -- there's always room for extreme human behavior, right.

Where irony goes to die

Lately, my experience with pop culture has been like a nonstop merry-go-round. It's all a blur and there's always a chance to grab a ring - it's just a matter of actually doing it, and who knows if it'll be brass, anyway? I set up my life to maximize my pop-cultural intake, and yet I fall behind, if not in actual consumption then in the response that should result. For example, I haven't so much as found the hour I need to sit down to really, really listen in order to organize my thoughts on the lovely new Ne-Yo album or on exactly why Young Jeezy's latest disc reminds me so much of a drag show (in sum, since I'll never write the latter post: the desperate, sometimes sad need prove realness over an increasingly antiquated musical backdrop).

The point (surprise: there is one!) is that I did grab onto a brass ring Tuesday night and I'm just getting around to talking about it. Sue me! Actually, that's an understatement: brass permeated my existence for I found myself in Madison Square Garden, assaulted aurally and visually by one Céline Dion.

Chance led me there -- someone I barely knew (but now know a little better) had an extra ticket but when offered it, I said "Duh." The show was, in a phrase, impossible to ignore. Aside from a stretch in the middle that showcased brand-new tracks, I was never bored and quite often hysterical. I shot some video, but I don't think I can say differently what I already have said: the woman is amazing and the fact that my interest in her actual music hasn't increased a bit since I became obsessed with her is testament to how awestruck I am by her persona. I don't care what she sings just as long as she looks determined, comes thisclose to tears and collapses in the throes of melodrama when she's done.

It was a two-hour spectacle of moving platforms and emotion bedazzled to match her bell bottoms that confirmed what I already knew. What was new, however, was the crowd experience. A Céline Dion show is, simply, where dorks can be dorks. I heard a collective gasp rush through the stadium when she sang her first words of the night, acapella: "The whispers in the morning..." During that song, "The Power of Love," I also witnessed fist-pumping. People in my vicinity clapped to what they perceived was the beat of "Taking Chances," while those lucky enough to sit stageside waved at her as she (literally) made the rounds. Her fans were so animated, it was as though charades was their second language and they were showing appreciation for their teacher. I saw a woman with a La Famiglia box in her lap feeling the fuck out of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now." Everyone was, really, (including me -- I am not immune to the charms of that mini piece of pseudo-gothic musical theater) -- the excitement that the opening tympani brought on alone was palpable. During "Because You Loved Me," an elderly black woman with an Adelaide bun raised the roof. She would later burst out of her seat when Céline implored the room to during the set closer "Love Can Move Mountains," because she'd clearly been waiting all night. It hit me during "Because" that I could sing along as loudly as I wanted...if only I knew the words. A cover of "All By Myself" netted a standing ovation for no good reason other than nostalgia (perhaps the only force more powerful to this crowd than Céline's voice -- the combo was lethal, for sure). Pageantspeak broke out during the extended acapella intro to "My Love" ("Go guuurl!"). I don't remember what the crowd's reaction was to her cover of "We Will Rock You" because at that point, I lost all sense of...sense. Finally, it all came back to me at the top of the very last encore, when acapella vocalizing stood in for the pan flute that normally opens "My Heart Will Go On." Céline's butthole could have performed it and people would have recognized it immediately and been just as thrilled. The force of the shrieking that came with the instant recognition was nothing short of exhilarating.

It was all a nice distraction from the woman who stood next to me the whole night. Per the jeans that reached above her navel, she was a mom. Her mousy hair was pulled back in a scrunchie and she seemed particularly moved and unafraid to show it, despite her being by herself. God, why was she by herself? Were it not for the sincerely constructed emotion emanating from the stage, I might have gotten sad. But no, I was out of my league: my sappy would have just been pithy compared to Céline's. This woman's focus is impeccable.

Céline, Part Deux

So, this is weird. I have this Céline Dion clip reel prepared for today (see below), and before I could even post it, my inbox was blowing up with news of the first one being mentioned in the New York Daily News today. I don't usually like to acknowledge such media mentions here, as it just looks like bragging, but the synergy on this was too irresistible. Here's the item:

Celine Dion is corrupting the youth of Broadway.

The fresh-faced cast of "Spring Awakening" has become obsessed with an affectionate parody tribute to the singer, available online, called "Celine Dion is Fucking Amazing."

"They watch the video every night before they go on, to get ready," laughs an insider. "And they try to crack each other up onstage by whispering lines from the video to each other that the audience can't hear."

One young star, when addressing the audience to take up a charity collection after the performance, quoted banter from Dion's Las Vegas show verbatim: "Everybody's feeling good tonight? Well, I'm glad you're feeling good, because we're feeling awesome."

As commentary on the video points out: "Got that? You are good. She is awesome. She wins."

Cute, right? Anyway, the new video's below. It's made up of clips from that CBS special that aired Friday. Probably not as titanic as the first video, but her insanity is always notable. I like the idea of covering her sporadically, as weirdness strikes. Céline is the new Winston.

Céline Dion is amazing

What did I do over my Christmas vacation? Lots of stuff and nothing at all, but most importantly: I studied Céline Dion intently. I'm about 2/3 of the way through Carl Wilson's endlessly insightful entry in the 33 1/3 book series, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. I haven't wished that I'd written a book so intensely since I read Larry Kramer's Faggots a few years ago (not that I have the experience, intelligence or skill to have written either, mind you). If the idea of examining the nature of taste vis a vis Céline and her album-with-that-Titanic-song-on-it sounds even remotely interesting to you, read this book and prepare to have your expectations blown and mind expanded.

One of Wilson's early points involves his prejudicial (i.e. pre-book) distaste for Céline, who's basically as objectively uncool as any pop culture figure of our time: "From the start, her music struck me as bland monotony raised to a pitch of obnoxious bombast--R&B with the sex and slyness surgically removed, French chanson severed from its wit and soul--and her repertoire as Oprah Winfrey-approved chicken soup for the consumerist soul, a neverending crescendo of personal affirmation deaf to social conflict and context. In celebrity terms, she was another dull Canadian goody-goody." This, I think, sums up her reputation well for those of us outside her circle of devotees, but on further examination, I'd say that her music's blandness is key to her appeal.

See, it's very easy for someone known as the Queen of Bland to knock you on your ass with her singular bizarreness. Last month, Céline released a 2-DVD set devoted to her just-wrapped stint in Las Vegas, the soul-robbingly successful, Cirque du Soleil-inspired A New Day... schmaltzfest. In addition to the show itself, there are feature-length (seriously!) documentaries on the making of the production, her fans and a real-time look at what goes on backstage as A New Day... unfurls. All are never less than fascinating, mostly because Céline Dion is a fucking spaz. There's almost a druggy effect due to her aforementioned goody-goody rep: watching this stuff, I felt high because I could not believe that boring old Céline was capable of being such a ball of weirdness. Her M.O.R. reputation is hilarious because she is, in fact, all over the road.

Anyway, you probably know how I do: below is an organized clips reel of my favorite moments of the two-DVD set. I'll never love Céline Dion's music (except "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and "Think Twice"). I'll never be anything but reluctantly appreciative of her voice. But her persona speaks to me on such a basic level that it might as well come with nutritional information. This right here is chicken soup for my soul.