Trending

Is Avril Lavigne’s New Video A Sign Of The Popocalypse?

SHARE THIS STORY

Posted by Maura Johnston on 01/26/2011 at 5:15 PM News

The Popdust Files: avril lavigne, ke$ha, p!nk

Earlier this week, Avril Lavigne’s video for her new single “What The Hell”—which features the chronically rebellious singer making off with a taxi, plugging her perfume and clothing lines, and giving her intended a TSA-worthy junk-grab—debuted, and the debate over whether or not it represented a nadir for a certain type of pop-rebellious stereotype began. Popdust’s Maura Johnston and Los Angeles Times music critic Ann Powers swap thoughts on the matters of Avril, P!nk, rebellion, and pop in an exchange that we’ll be publishing over the next few days.

Dear Ann,

I have to ask: What the heck is up with this video for “What The Hell”? Not content with wreaking retail havoc in a way similar to her video for “Complicated,” the clip also has Avril Lavigne stealing—and crashing—a taxi, doing the double-middle-finger in a way that is about halfway as sassy as Alicia Silverstone’s in “Cryin’,” and finally grabbing her intended’s crotch. Oh, there’s also product placement for her perfumes and her clothing line, as well as a few other consumer items.

The more I watch it (which I’m doing multiple times, mostly because I can’t get its Max Martin-crafted organ bit out of my head), the more I wonder: Does this represent some sort of nadir as far as rebellion acts go? On the one hand, it’s weird that the song’s refrain has Avril singing that “all her life, [she's] been good,” since the whole adult-contemporary punk getup was hers from the first chord of “Complicated” and through “Sk8er Boi,” the various endorsement deals she’s racked up, and so on. On the other hand, she’s definitely going far beyond just fucking up a display at the mall, as she did in that first video.

Take the flip side, then, and you have P!nk, who’s also singing rebellion songs–by the same composers, no less, although her brand of breaking away from the norm is more about embracing one’s self to positive ends (and not messing up any store displays along the way). The video for “Fuckin’ Perfect” takes on the idea of being different head-on, and instead of being blithely “whatever, I do what I want” a la Avril, it shows how alienation can cause pain—but that pop music can serve as a salve of sorts, as the clip’s heroine (played by the awesome Tina Majorino) winds up getting past the low points of her life through summoning strength within.

So does P!nk cancel Avril out? What would happen if she’d sung “What The Hell” or crashed a taxi in her video—would I be as turned off? And as a parent, would you want your daughter to grow up as a P!nk or an Avril—or as a Princess-complex-eschewing Ke$ha—or would you just tell her that it really does get better than the life presented by these tableaus of pop-star femininity?

All my life I’ve been good, too,
Maura

Come back tomorrow for Ann’s response, and check out more of her writing at the LA Times’ Pop & Hiss blog.

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)