{"id":6286,"date":"2019-04-13T00:27:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-13T00:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/?p=6286"},"modified":"2019-04-13T00:27:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T00:27:24","slug":"why-we-love-movies-about-female-pop-stars-like-teen-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/why-we-love-movies-about-female-pop-stars-like-teen-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Love Movies About Female Pop Stars Like &#8216;Teen Spirit&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is there a better avatar for the impossible scrutiny women face than the female pop star? Is there a character archetype more uniquely suited for channeling the depths of the female psyche than \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 the female pop star? <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In recent films like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Star Is Born<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vox Lux<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and as of this weekend, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomtickets.com\/movies\/teen-spirit\/278309\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Teen Spirit<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the stories of young women rising to pop superstardom in a world dominated by social media, reality television shows, news feeds, and even pop feminism are being told with nuance and depth. Why do films keep returning to the world of pop music? Why do films keep exploring female identity in a world populated by these things through the eyes of a female pop star?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because a female pop star, real or dreamed up, understands you. She sees you. She\u2019s ready to give a voice to everything you\u2019re feeling, everything the world is putting on you. She knows you better than you know yourself. And she\u2019s ready to take the stage to sing about it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"810\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qyJt23mMssM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are days when I think about all of the hours I spent in my room as a preteen or teenager, listening to Britney Spears, The Spice Girls, Katy Perry, or Ke$ha. I think about all of the songs sung in the key of \u201cI understand what you\u2019re going through right now\u201d that made me feel validated. I think of all the times in my younger, more inexperienced days, when I wished I could just <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">play you this song because it says how I feel better than I ever will. Do you wanna hear it? <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I sometimes catch myself remembering about the daydreams I had about a having a bigger life than I ever thought possible and how Robyn\u2019s \u201cHang With Me\u201d was playing on my iPod and I felt invincible. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With all this in mind, it makes perfect sense to me that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Teen Spirit<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which stars Elle Fanning as Violet, a 17-year-old Brit plucked from obscurity (the Isle of Wight, to be exact) and chosen to compete on the fictional reality singing competition series <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Teen Spirit<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, actually exists. One of the earliest scenes of Violet shows her listening to \u201cGenesis\u201d by Grimes. The song is ethereal, bright, otherworldly \u2014 a completely different version of reality than Violet\u2019s, which includes working a dead-end job and singing in local bars and feeling resigned to her stagnant lot in life. But \u201cGenesis\u201d lets her float outside herself, even if it is for a few minutes, and dream.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Making it as a contestant on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Teen Spirit <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">offers Violet the chance to escape her small bubble and gives root to her feelings that life could be so much more. She chooses to perform pop songs that mirror these possibilities, that lift her up as much as they lift the audience watching her and cheering her on. Ellie Goulding\u2019s \u201cLights\u201d and Sigrid\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Kill My Vibe\u201d let Violet find her identity as a pop star and as a young woman. They give her the voice she needs to express herself and demand to be seen and, even though she is in the rare position of becoming a nationally-recognized pop star, as you watch her you feel like she, in all her pop star glory, uniquely understands you, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sure, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Teen Spirit <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is just a movie and Violet is just a character. She lives inside the 92-minute runtime and won\u2019t be found on magazine covers in a month\u2019s time. Violet won\u2019t be releasing a greatest hits album in 20 years. Her VH1 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unplugged <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">special will never make it to the air. But that doesn\u2019t mean that experience of watching her explore and shape her identity through the power of pop music within this film isn\u2019t as real or valid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For women, the desire to been seen, validated, to feel comfortable enough to express our fears or our joys is simmering right there beneath the surface (can you see it?). If films are a window to the human psyche and spirit, then films focusing on female pop stars \u2014 a special group of women that our culture is always ready to either shame or valorize at the drop of a hat \u2014 reflect to us our worst cultural tendencies to pick women apart, to think we understand who they are even though they are telling us how they want to be seen through their songs. The safe space of a pop song lets a woman pour out her heart. She can be as messy as she wants, as silly, as angry, as upset as she dares. When that is amplified through the medium of film, it somehow hits harder, rings even truer. Much in the way that women\u2019s film of the 1930s and 1940s gave a voice and vision to the interior lives of women of that time (and were subject to be written off because they catered to female stories), I would argue today\u2019s films centered on female pop stars or women occupying similarly superficial fictional careers function in the same way, allowing us to explore contemporary concerns facing women.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think of the way <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vox Lux <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">uses its protagonist, avant-garde pop star Celeste (played by Natalie Portman) to explore how we, as a culture, process national trauma like gun violence or the way we make amends with the problematic, overly sexualized depictions of young women in the media because it sells. Or how about <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Star Is Born<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s subtextual discussion of the validity of music when it focuses less on \u201cdeep\u201d matters of the heart and instead sees Ally (played by Lady Gaga) sing about ravenous, valid female desire after seeing a hot guy in jeans. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s easy to dismiss pop music in real life. You can label it as shallow and change the station any time you want. But in those movies where pop music and, more often than not, the women singing it are front and center demanding that you <em>see<\/em> them and<em> hear<\/em> them, you shouldn\u2019t brush it off. You should watch, you should listen. It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s all made of fiction; it\u2019s still true.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Get your tickets for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Teen Spirit <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomtickets.com\/movies\/teen-spirit\/278309\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and watch it when it arrives in theaters on April 12.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is there a better avatar for the impossible scrutiny women face than the female pop star? Is there a character archetype more uniquely suited for channeling the depths of the female psyche than \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 the female pop star? In recent films like A Star Is Born, Vox Lux, and as of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":6301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[40,37],"class_list":["post-6286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial","tag-featuredpage","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6286"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6302,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286\/revisions\/6302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}