Before the excoriation and finger-wagging begins, I want to genuinely praise Pharrell Williams. Forget the legion of hits he's produced in the last 20 years with partner Chad Hugo as part of the Neptunes. In the past year alone he's lent his silky croon to colossal hits "Get Lucky" and "Blurred Lines," unleashed a firebreathing cleanup verse in "Move That Dope," manned the boards with Hans Zimmer for the Amazing Spider-Man 2 soundtrack and dominated the Billboard charts with the Oscar-nominated "Happy." If the time from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2014 was all we had to judge Pharrell on, his discography would still be unassailable.
What Pharrell
should be criticized for is the bizarre "pro-woman" campaign that's
accompanied sophomore LP G I R L. Before the album had been released,
Pharrell spoke
to GQ
about the "Women and girls, for the most part, (who) "have
just been so loyal to me and supported me."" The stylized album title
then was Pharrell's way of paying tribute to members of the opposite sex that
had helped him out so much. What Pharrell seemed to be forgetting in his
tip of the Dudley Do
Right hat was using the word "girl" infantilizes those heroic
women who had helped him along the way. If you're a man reading this,
ignore the "would you call your mother this?" test and think about it
this way: if a woman consistently referred to you as a "boy" wouldn't
it start to rankle you? I know it would me. The word "boy" connotes a
doe-eyed naivety I'd like to think I've pushed past. Boys and girls are people
who don't know better; with minds that worry about things like lunch and the
time until recess. When you insist on using either to describe someone who has
reached adulthood, all you're saying is their mind is set to childish.
If Pharrell's
facile campaign had stopped there, I wouldn't be writing this article. Only
when he released the video for the clattering funk of "Come Get It
Bae" did I find myself compelled to write something. The song itself is
undeniably catchy, with rallying handclaps that recall "Iko Iko" and
strutting guitar Pharrell might've swept up from the floor of the "Get
Lucky" sessions. I wish it was left there and we never had to see
Pharrell's grand cinematic vision for G I R L's third single. Instead
what we as viewers are provided with is the zenith of Pharrell's ludicrously
mixed message. In red block lettering recalling "Blurred Lines," the
words "BEAUTY HAS NO EXPIRATION DATE" dominate the first frame of the
video. By itself, that kind of hokey "Dove Real
Beauty" message is blandly inoffensive. The problem is with who
Pharrell trots out to "prove his point." "None of them boys know
the first thing about your fantasy," he assures a parade of under-40 women
from his director's chair. The supposed
lack of a black woman on G I R L's cover is "replaced" by
the absence of a woman who has made it past her fourth decade on Earth.
Now I understand
when you're casting a video you go with the best, most qualified candidates. It
is part of the reason I took
offense to the controversy that swirled around the casting for Arcade
Fire's stunning "We
Exist" video. In the clip, which premiered in late May, Amazing
Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield plays a young person struggling with
gender identity while living in a small town. For an excruciating six minutes,
Garfield's character is leaving home in women's clothes and getting into fights
at the local watering hole. Ultimately Garfield's unnamed character steps
on-stage with Arcade Fire at Coachella and finds a "home." When
Against Me!'s lead singer Laura Jane Grace saw the video she took to
Twitter "Dear @arcadefire, maybe when making a video for a song called
'We Exist' you should get an actual 'Trans' actor instead of Spider-Man?"
Grace (formerly Thomas James Gabel) has been open about her own personal
battles with gender dysphoria and was understandably upset about the exclusion.
I don't share her same frustration, a. because I'm "cishet scum" and
b. I believe Garfield gave a real portrayal of an extremely disenfranchised
minority. The women in "Come Get It Bae," through no fault of their
own, fail miserably in conveying the agelessness of beauty. There isn't even an
attempt made to capture beauty in its twilight years. No pieces of flab, no
grey hairs, and zero wrinkles are shown as striking women nod in approval to
the luridly repetitious "come get it bae."
Not that I
personally mind lurid come-ons in R&B. The
Weeknd has staked an entire career on being a hedonistic lecher. In "High for This"
he's coaxing a woman into popping ecstasy to have better sex. "Enemy" has
him doing his horrifying best to make a lover into a rival. Elsewhere in the
Indie R&B circuit, Miguel begged "tell me that the p**** is
mine," in "P****
is Mine," and came away with one of 2012's most beautifully desperate
songs. The difference between those two and Pharrell is they weren't trying to
mask their material as The Second Sex. They understood misogyny was
under-girding their material, because men can be misogynistic. They know they
don't deserve applause for telling a sad truth and they're not looking for any.
Despite his assertion being
a "feminist" is an impossible aspiration, Pharrell's seeking
credit for wearing the sheep's clothing of one. The whole thing is remarkably
disingenuous, telling women they can go their own way while ensuring what they
need in their life is Skateboard P. "You won't believe what you'll
do," he insists in his feathery voice. What's significantly harder to
believe is that Pharrell thought any of this could be uplifting.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to leave them below. And if you just want to yell at me and say "you're wrong," you're welcome to do that as well.
