Advertising in winter..

There seems to be a discussion going on in Holland about all the recycling being done in Dutch advertising.. Cora van Mora is back, Martine Bijl is back for Hak and one of the most succesful campaigns ever (for Campina) is being plainly copied by a competitor. Leon Bouwman of Adformatie wrote about it in de Telegraaf. Well, no suprise for the steady visitor of my log. (S)He'll have read that we're in the closed, reinforcement timeframe, looking back and repeating cultural icons, to gain new steady ground after a period of upheaval. And, very interesting, all those advertising campaigns returning now, stem from the last timeframe of reinforcement, between 1983 and 1989. Leon and Suzanne, who complained about all the recycling in Adformatie, will just have to have some patience. A new timeframe will come, eventually..

In the mean time, I have been studying on the exact changing moment of the spring and summer timeframes, sometime 1971, when the revolution of the 60s went up in smoke, all the heroes disbanded (Beatles) or just died (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison). The doors to freedom had opened, and in the seventies everyone would jump out and claim some space for himself, leading to the paradox of extreme hedonism (glamrock! Disco!) and total seriousness (conscious raising groups, feminism, gay liberation, the social academy even given curriculum points for men who knitted, and everyone desperately looking for the nuances in communication: "can I say that, or will it be offensive to anyone.."). Lots of long, long long democracy meetings..

Enough to work on, to get the book rolling..

Sweet rainy seventies nostalgia

Idling away most of the day. Library closed and raining.. Downloaded music, watched a great DVD about WattStax 1973, the black Woodstock. Great Music and a look into the style of the day. A lot of Black power (100.000 people shouting "I am somebody, I am beautiful, I want to be respected!"), and rightly so, in those days. Chilling anyway, that people still had to learn to be 'somebody' in the early 70s. Funny interludes by Richard Pryor. And of course the hair styles, the clothes. Don't think any black funk artist today would try and get on stage in a stunning pink suit with shorts and white high boots..
Read some about the Seventies and Bubblegum music, the lightweight tunes that blocked the top10 for most 'deep' artist. Then found www.top40.nl, where they have every Dutch Top40 in history and spend the next few hours in nostalgia, looking at the hitparades I knew by heart then. Grew up in the glamrock-light version of The Sweet, Slade and Mud (I was a big Sweet fan for what I then thought was an eternity, but in reality turns out to be 3 years or so, with songs like Poppa Joe (my first ever single, together with, dare I say it?, Un Canto A Galicia from Julio Iglesias), Wig Wam Bam, Blockbuster, Ballroom Blitz and Fox On The Run, among many others. Strange I still can't find a book on them and The Middle Of The Road, for instance. But then again, they were nowhere as succesful as in Holland. Even my dad loved The Middle (or, to be more precise, the singer of the band, Sally, with her long blond hair and hot pants, singing number 1 hits like Sacramento, Talk Of All The USA, Soley Soley). So we watched Top Pop with the whole family, while my father remarked about The Sweet: "Well, their hair may be far too long, at least they've combed it..". Strange, I still remember that remark. Perhaps because my own hair fell to my shoulders then, too..

Autumn angels are not always what they appear

Charlie’s Angels premiered september 1976 and was an instant hit (only the Superbowl attracted more viewers). The Angels Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith en Farrah Fawcett were on the cover of Time Magazine within a month. Whitney Womack wrote a sociological piece on the show. Yes, that’s right. You can do that, about this show.
It’s a typical show for the controversial last bit of the seventies. Autumn timeframe, in my book. The curious mix of sexual tension, beauty, suspense and feminism attracted not only women, but also college graduates and teenage boys. While critics denounced the show as pure schlock, feminist were competing for airtime to open fire: “a backlash against feminism. Charlie dispatches his streetwise girls to use their sexual wiles on the world while he reaps the profits. The Angels are being shoved back into the kind of subordinate and sexualized roles from which feminists had worked to break free.” Others objected to the virtually unattainable ideal of thinness and beauty that the Angels represented. Then again, Whitney, a young female fan at the time of the show, primary saw “images of female intelligence, strength, solidarity and community. Importantly, the Angels led independent lives. Kelly and Jill were unmarried and Sabrina was divorced, yet none of them seemed particularly obsessed with finding a husband or “settling down”. With their own money, they bought hip clothes and fast cars, including Jill’s white Cobra with black racing stripes.” While we look at it now as 70s stupidity, it worked it’s magic in that timeframe!
Exactly the delicate balance between feminism and anti-feminism made the success of the show. Controversy abound, but still something for everyone, and therefore an icon for success in an autumn timeframe. There’s so much to learn from popular culture..

And, interesting enough, the movie remake stems from another autumn period: 2000. Only: sooner than a remake, the 2000 film version is an over the top parody, according to Whitney: “While claiming to pay homage to the original series, the film instead exaggerates and mocks the series’ excesses and retains virtually none of its feminist sensibilities. Feminism is replaced with a sort of watered down, Spice Girls brand of substanceless “girl power” that in many ways promotes rather than undermines traditional gender codes. While the original series is predicated on a hard-fought challenge to the patriarchal power structure of the police department, the new Angels aren’t even trained police officers. Further, the film focuses far more than the series on the Angels’ private lives, especially their romantic relationships, and emphasizes their feminine attributes and even their domestic skills - returning us in many ways to the Angel in the House model of womanhood.” Drew Barrymore, who brought the 2000 version to the screen: “I became interested because the Angels “weren’t feminist, male-bashing ladies. And that’s refreshing”. In another interview she says she’s “not a torch-carrying feminist”, because she wants to be “sexy and fun”. So much for feminism at the start of a new century: feminism is definitely non-sexy. It could be in the 70s, though! In the original series, men never got away with sexist remarks. In the new version, the Angels do not dare tell their boyfriends that they’re Angels and instead try to bake muffins..

The 2000 Angels resort to the opportunistic, superficial side of autumn: just plain hedonism and no message to be found anywhere, all links with reality are deliberately eliminated: “It’s fantasy and just a bit of escape....It’s a fun, just ode-to-joy, kinda pop-a-wheelie kind of movie”, says director Joseph McGinty Nichol. The bonding consists of lots of hugging, giggling, playing with one another’s hair, and giving boyfriend advice, whereas in the 70s series there were hardly any boyfriends, much more focus on work and, believe it or not, almost never sexy underwear: the girls walked around in the typical female career suits of the time.

No, if I were Whitney, I would not be satisfied with Charlie’s Angels 2000. But we can console her a little bit. In other TV series of the last few years, women do pick up the line the 70s Angels planted. In police shows like CSI en NYPD Blue, for instance, but one could also see teenage shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Xena as examples of feminism and anti-feminism balanced out to mass appeal. And in the audience will be a new Whitney Womack, getting the right clues.

70's teen idol power!

Read a humorous piece on teenage girls and their idols. Ilana Nash wrote about her youth and the how the media would ridicule female teen idols like Shaun Cassidy, The Osmonds or Leif Garrett, while always writing in neutral or positive terms about male teen idols, however stupid roles those female actors or singers might play: A pin-up idol for girls is reviled more than a pin-up idol for boys.
Researchers also have a denigrating opinion about male teen-idols: “for girls of this age real boys remain a threatening and unknown quantity. Sexual experience most girls of all social classes want to hold off for some future time. They know, however, that going out with boys invariably carries the possibility of being expected to kiss, or ‘pet’. The fantasy boys of pop make no such demands. They ‘love’ their fans without asking anything in return.”
Ilana is really pissed off about that opinion ("I DID want to have sex with Shaun!"), but reviewers in papers held the same view, as one angry fan wrote after a bad review of her idols: “When their fans are old enough to start looking for real boyfriends,” sneered a review of a 1975 Bay City Rollers concert, “the Rollers will soon be forgotten.” But it’s not that simple; some of us were lesbians, some of us did have boyfriends. In any case, girls mature earlier than boys, so it was more a question of waiting for them to grow up than the other way around!”

Ilana: “Boys rotten teen-behavior did not raise eyebrows; it was assumed that their natural ‘immaturity’ must be borne with patience. To be told that our love for Shaun Cassidy was ‘immature’, and that ‘real’ (i.e. aggressive) masculinity was something we should ‘grow into’ liking, was disturbing. Idol-fandom augmented my sex life, not replaced it, much as grown men will entertain fantasies about women celebrities while happily married to ‘real life’ women. We listened to Shaun and just waited for a viable opportunity!
How cruel, then, and how very stupid, to ridicule girls for liking ‘non-threatening’ or ‘feminine’ teen idols. When we consider how masculinity presents itself to girls and the power of the threats it poses, teenybopper fan-dom looks less like immaturity and more like sound common sense. Shaun Cassidy did not punch our breasts or try to unharness our bras in public, as our classmates did, nor did he shriek about ‘poontang’ (or ‘give it to me, bitch’), as did the performers whose rock was considered more cool. He sang of walking girls home or asking them to ‘come out tonight’ to look at the stars. Even when he celebrated sex, which he did, the veiled lyrics suggested mutual participating instead of subject/object tension (“this will be our night/and I know that we can do it/do it till we get it right”). Call me crazy, but that sounded more girl-friendly to me than the hunger for power demonstrated by the males around me and represented in hard rock. Teen idol fan-dom offered me the sole venue in which I could live the feminist promise to control my sexuality, free from the hostile aggression that made female initiative impossible or dangerous in the real world.


Must say I agree with Ilana. And some of those teenybopper singers where actually not bad at all, in retroperspective.. I sometimes still secretly enjoy David Cassidy, or the Osmonds. Ilana’s right: they at least could sing and the songs are innocent and happy. Good for a smile. Like Ilans’s piece of sensible writing.

coffeebreak break out

Before you know it, your life is a series of daily rituals again..: the girls at the Blenz counter automatically charge me for a medium cappuchino and the guy making it, who left Serbia in his early thirties (yes, that would figure) is making short conversation (his brother in law is from Arnhem and believe it or not, writing a book here, about rituals). The security guard at the library is greeting me as a regular customer. Even at the swimming pool, they say: "you go in front, you're better at breaststroke". I don't mind, there is something friendly and familiar in people recognizing and anticipating for you. Makes you feel right at home. But today I couldn't resist and ordered another type of coffee. Hey, I mean, I've got more sides to me than a medium cappuchino! They were actually shocked and we got into a discussion about change and age. They thought people shouldn't change after a certain age which they guessed at 38, thank you, I will remain a loyal customer. I argued that a little surprise keeps you alive. Philosophy over the coffeecounter. Would you like to drink the same coffee the rest of your life..? The thought depresses me. I am a seventies child remember? Always something new to discover about myself. Once, when somebody asked me why I was trying out every new thing (we were talking about music), I answered that I am such a rooted person, I need some roll to not turn into a rock. Keep rolling, is what I say. Even if it's only a once-a-week change in coffee..

meatheads and dingbats in summertime

Found a book on All In The Family, the show that started just as the ‘summer’timeframe (1971-1977) took off. And rightly so! All In The Family helped people through the mounting insecurities of all changes in society. Haven’t yet read all about this incredibly funny TV show that ran all the way through the seventies.The characters were carefully matched with the times. Archie Bunker, the bigot, simply refusing any change around him, king in his lounge chair, his ‘stupid’ wife Edith ('dingbat'), who stood for anything Good and Caring and ‘Meathead’ Mike, his son in law and liberal, always attacking his views. Like on violence.
Mike: "Violence won’t help!" Archie: "What’s wrong with revenge? That’s a perfect way to get even."
Never one for real arguments, Archie just kept to his own world view. Gloria, his daughter was the one mostly resembling the feeling of the seventies: looking for her own identity, wanting to be independent, but not always able to pull it off. What she did know, however, was that her mother had to change: “Submitting to him, That’s what she’s doing. Submitting to her king...her ruler...her lord and master.” Archie: “Ain’t that a nice way of putting it?”

There were many doubts before putting the show on TV. In the beginning, they started each show with a warning: “The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous light on our frailties, prejudices and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show - in a mature fashion - just how absurd we are.”
And that was what the show did: it brought a little humor in the heavy topics the society in this ‘out-of-control’ summer period had to deal with. People were on the move, they just needed a little encouragement. All In The Family delivered. When asked why the show was so succesful, ‘Archie’ said: “the answer, I think, is that Everyman, when he looks at Archie, knows he is not looking at himself; he is happily looking back at what he was.”

Even so, Archie Bunker’s fear of change reflected the daily anxiety of the white heterosexual man in the seventies: everybody was emancipating, and where does that leave him? In the series, when his daughter Gloria is once again making a speech on human rights, Archie belts out: What about my rights? I know I got a lot going against me. I’m white, I’m protestant and I’m hardworking - but can’t you find some lousy amendment that protects me?

All that, and funny too.

Vancouver observations part III

Every morning when I look out, there are two homeless men sitting in the bus stop. You can immediately see they are homeless. Beards, dirty clothing, plastic bags around them. But they are sipping coffee there. Coffee they get at McDonalds. I wonder. Does McDonalds have a social responsibility program, giving away free coffee to the homeless? Or is their coffee particularly cheap or adjusted to the average homeless taste bud? Often, when I look out, there is a third man sitting with them. Thought he was homeless too, at first, but he doesn’t fit the typical style, with his short hair and black polo. He is always talking fast, using a lot of hand movement. And then this morning, I saw him on the phone at the library. Again, talking fast and making a lot of movement, reading something from a little notebook, obviously agitated. That’s not a homeless man.. Social worker, working the streets all day, trying to help them? Religious man, giving them kind words from the bible? Or just a drug dealer?

The only thing I hate is that I can’t quietly eat my ice cream at the steps of the library. There is always a homeless man starting to shout or babble. Nothing helps if they pick on you, they all have graduated from the ‘get contact’ class in the school of the homeless. If you don’t react, they will just start shouting ‘you’re an asshole and I am human too, only asking a question, you speak English don’t you’, etc etc. If you react, they want money or keep on talking, mostly not understandable bits of language, accompanied by very clear bits of saliva. And sit next to you (the smell doesn’t really go with ice cream). Once I tried an effective method, in Amsterdam (my, does Holland have few homeless people, in comparison): “out-crazy them”. Start waving your arms like mad, uttering nonsense syllables with lots of saliva. Screaming helps too: “YaaaaHH! KLM! Bad sky! BE-atles! You ARE! YaaaaHH!” But I admit, you have to be in the mood. Wasn’t today, so took the abuse, stoic looking forward and eating my ice cream and feeling just a little bit of social guilt. Gave a homeless girl on the next street some money. Another day in Vancouver.