Ellen Willis on rock's alienation of women

"[...] the pretension, competitiveness, and abstraction from feeling that go along with emphasis on technique are alienating to most women. (This may be why there are relatively few female jazz fans.) In an overwhelmingly male atmosphere, female performers have served mainly as catalysts for male cultural-revolutionary fantasies of tough chicks, beautiful bitches, and super-yin old ladies. Janis Joplin half-transcended this function by confronting it, screaming out the misery and confusion of being what others wanted her to be. But she was a genius." 

Ellen Willis wrote this in 1971. The gender essentialism in the first sentence is problematic, to say the least, and I'm a huge Ellen Willis fan. That women (as music fans) are inherently more emotional, less focused on technique -- because worrying about things like chord changes and time signature are anathema to "art" of making music -- is, unfortunately, a trope still employed today. Maybe one of the most prevalent, yet unspoken, "truths" in music fandom. Men = intellectual, women = passionate. It's an easy, though disappointing, claim to make when you consider all the ways women are alienated as fans and as creators of music. Why not examine why women are dissuaded from the more technical aspects of music? Maybe this is only anecdotal evidence, but from the stories I've read of women who form bands, they get a later start than guys, and the "boys' club" mentality is often downright inhospitable to women, so there's no sense of camaraderie or community. There are a lot of ways women are alienated from music; I don't think a lack of competitiveness or pretension is one. (Believe me, I can "nerd out" with the best of them.)

The latter is, sadly, still accurate. Women are still too often seen as "muse," not artist. And for women who manage to transcend the popstar model , only certain archetypes are provided as alternatives: witch (Tori Amos. Kate Bush), badass (Chryssie Hynde) or feminist shrew (riot grrrl), for example. And those archetypes serve as the examples for every subsequent female singer-songwriter or frontwoman.

Ellen Willis on Dylan

(A version of this was posted to my Tumblr)

"Many people hate Bob Dylan because they hate being fooled. Illusion is fine, if quarantined and diagnosed as mild; otherwise it is potentially humiliating (is he laughing at me? Conning me out of my money?) Some still discount Dylan as merely a popular culture hero (how can a teenage idol be a serious artist -- at most, perhaps a serious demagogue.) But the most tempting answer -- forget his public presence, listen to his songs -- won't do for Dylan has exploited his image as a vehicle for artist statement."

Willis said this more than thirty years ago, but what's really telling is that you could easily sub a number of artists for Dylan and it still rings true. (Madonna? No stranger to demagoguery. Gaga? Well, people discount her as a mere "pop" star, too.)

Also interesting is that Dylan, when viewed with enough historical distance, was once a "teen pop idol." Even when I think of the Dylan of my parents' generation, I don't see him as a pop star, only as a "serious" artists. It goes to show how much someone's narrative can change throughout their career given a few twists of fate. (Pun intended.)