There are many differences between the music videos “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” by My Chemical Romance and “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” by Ezra Furman (she/they), from release date to genre to aesthetics, but both videos parody the cliches of American high schools, and both videos use this parody to challenge stereotypes regarding gender nonconformity.
The parody of American high schools can be seen as camp. In “Notes on ‘Camp,’” Susan Sontag describes camp as “a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naive” (Sontag, 1964, pg. 7). In “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” the school scenes look fake and empty; the acting is strange and unconvincing. The band plays within a garage decorated with many spotlights and brightly colored walls, and performs with over the top expressions. Despite looking bad, it’s tackled with passion and playfulness, the true spirit of camp. The setting of “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” seems fake and empty. The gym is entirely undecorated, besides a single disco ball hanging from the ceiling, and even more than that, it looks decrepit and sad, chipped paint on the walls and bleachers. The only attendees of this school dance are two dancers and Furman herself, however Furman sings as if nothing is out of the ordinary, treating it seriously, while the dancing becomes increasingly strange and abstract. Furman treats the video as a serious performance of a love song despite the ridiculous setting, exemplifying camp.
Another aspect of camp Sontag identifies is challenging the boundaries of gender. Camp relishes in “going against the grain of one’s sex” and sees gender as a performance of sorts: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. … not a woman, but a ‘woman.’ To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role” (Sontag, 1964, pg. 4) In “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” lead singer Gerard Way (he/they) wears a suit, yet sports shoulder-length hair, eyeshadow, and eyeliner, traits that were not yet normalized for all genders. Way has stated before that they use performing as a way to play with gender, saying “I have always identified a fair amount with the female gender, and began at a certain point in MCR to express this through my look and performance styles.” (Way, 2014). Similarly, in her video, Furman wears a suit with a bra underneath, lipstick, and eyeshadow, an androgynous outfit with signifiers of masculinity and femininity. As a trans woman who at the time of the video’s release was identifying publicly as genderfluid, Furman’s very presence within the video challenges the gender binary. The lyrics and music itself further this message. She sings in a low register, typically associated with masculinity, about wanting to be a girlfriend. The song’s themes of performing gender roles you weren’t assigned is very camp.
How does the campy portrayal of high school settings relate to the themes of gender nonconformity? In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Stuart Hall defines the “regime of representation” as “the whole repertoire of imagery and visual effects through which ‘difference’ is represented at any one historical moment” (Hall, 1997, pg. 232). In this case, we’re looking at the “regime of representation” of trans and gender nonconforming (GNC) people. Within media, trans people are simultaneously hypervisible and invisible. For example, trans women are constantly portrayed as mentally ill predators, such as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. At the same time, trans people are invisible when experiencing transphobic violence. Thus, the regime of representation is one that demonizes trans people in ways that allow people to see trans people as evil and thus undeserving of human respect.
The videos challenge this regime by normalizing gender nonconformity. Captions on screen within “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” seek to empathize with those who don’t fit in. One of these such captions is “If you ever felt curious,” followed by a guy in a locker room eyeing another guy, making explicit that the messaging of this video is meant for those left out by heteronormative society (My Chemical Romance, 2010). Way is even kissed on the cheek by a fellow (male) bandmate during a climactic moment. Similarly, Furman’s video contains empowering positive messaging about being GNC, doubly impactful given they are trans herself. She sings, “Honey, I know that I don’t have the body you want in a girlfriend … But maybe, baby it’s not about what you thought that you wanted” (Furman, 2019). They speak from their own experiences as a trans person to portray transness as a positive, normal, and human thing, through the structure of an average love song. What Furman sings about is relatable for anyone who experiences romantic attraction: longing for someone, and worrying if you’re enough for them. Additionally, Furman features two men dancing together romantically in a positive light, further normalizing it.
Furthermore, both videos poke fun at cisheteronormative tropes using their high school settings. The video’s beats of comedy mainly are directed towards heterosexual romance, such as when male bandmates awkwardly butcher attempts to woo female love interests. When there’s a guy-girl slow dance happening, Way and the others sit in the middle, adamantly refusing to participate. The video portrays the cisheteronormative culture of American high schools as laughable and ridiculous, thus challenging its status as the “right” option. Similarly, Furman’s video takes place in a school dance. School dances are very cisheteronormative, guys wearing suits and girls in dresses, and each of them dancing together. Furman portrays this setting as undesirable and strange, thus pointing out the faults in cishetero norms, and completely rids the setting of any male-female slow dancers. Through the reclamation of this space, Furman also challenges the norms and creates a positive representation.
Through parodying cisheteronormity, queer and GNC musicians can create positive representation that challenges existing stereotypes, as shown by these two music videos.
Works Cited
Bella Union. bellaunioninc. (2019). Ezra Furman - I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend (Official Video) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e1h31hVGSw
Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Newbery Park, CA: Sage.
My Chemical Romance. (2010). My Chemical Romance - I’m Not Okay (I Promise) [Dialogue/MTV Version] [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhZTNgAs4Fc
Sontag, S. (1964). “Notes on ‘Camp’.”
Way, G. [Gerard-Way]. (2014, October 14). Wow! I’m so glad that helped in figuring out your gender identity. I have always been extremely sensitive to those [Comment on the online forum post I am Gerard Way, musician, artist, creator, and cousin of Joe Rogan- Ask me anything! PS my album Hesitant Alien just came out.] Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2i1840/i_am_gerard_way_musician_artist_creator_and/
As a gender nonconforming person myself, I found this piece to be both engaging and useful. I think that these topics should be spoken about more in not only an academic context, but also in more informal writing like blogs. Aled's piece focuses in on cisheteronormativity and the fluid concept of gender, so one piece that I think could have been useful to work with in this blog post is Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis' Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online. Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online uses terms such as troll, gamergater, and the manosphere to describe ways in which toxic masculinity and homophobia persist online. In a section on hate speech, which especially is directed at sexual minorities and people of marginalized genders, Marwick and Lewis state that, "4chan participants usually dismiss their cavalier use of “fag” or “n*****” as ironically funny, or as a way to maintain boundaries: people offended by such speech will stay away from spaces that use it..." This means that internet trolls specifically say things they know will offend trans people or gay people, not because they care about making an oppressed person feel bad, but because they want "softies" to avoid them. The main other reason an internet troll (subcategory 4channer) might say something offensive online is so that they can maintain a sense of power and control over those who are already so oppressed that it is, unfortunately, easy to get away with continuing to oppress them.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that Aled doesn't care about political correctness, but rather about ensuring trans and genderdiverse people feel safe in their own bodies and physical spaces, too.
written by: Lex Gilbert