Neko Case and Kelly Hogan Stirring up the Nerd Nest
Premiering this morning on Paste.com here, Neko Case and Kelly Hogan unvelied their contribution to the charity album 2776. With a cornucopia of hip-relevant participants like Yo La Tengo, Patton Oswalt, Ed Helms and Aimee Mann the album stands to be a priority talking point in independant record stores, vintage clothes shops, and community gardens in university towns throughout the hemisphere.
As befits prolific twitter-era provoceteur like Case she and her long time co-hort Hogan have used the song (These aren't the Droids You're Looking For) to stir up pop-culture's most comfortably held conservatisms. And it will only be just so long before the arch penis-shadows of punditry like Bill O’rielly take issue with the song and devote a self-flagellatingly huge amount of wind in warning everyone of the dangers enumerated by its existence. Which should be good publicity for the album.
It will also likely lead to flame wars on social media among the more conservative ranks of comic writers and artists. I'm pretty bad at Twitter and so on, so it will likely pass me by but those of you interested might keep an eye on it.
In the song Case and Hogan make lists of the imagery that results from the unchallenged male dominance in pop-culture fantasy making. The way that idealized future utopias and dystopias alike find perfectly plot-driven excuses to reduce women’s roles and women’s input to that of hyper-sexualized harem dwellers. While focusing all proposed innovations toward making earth less verdant and war more efficient.
And if your common male listener gets unsettled when late in the song Hogan and Case fantasize about impregnating men at will with litters of kittens and puppies, we are perhaps coming to terms with what it feels like for women to read comic books. Wherein strong women are villains, all females are dressed in outfits that look like forms of penance, and the female form is made robotic (hairless, disproportionate, and inhuman).
It’s a playful and catchy track that is clearly framed as humorous. But no good joke is made without a firm grounding in reality. And the reality is that the fantasy realms of action films and science fiction futures are the last bastion of reactionary male dominance. Where guys rule with unquestioned authority and can freely impose their fantasies of submission and dominance on the female element.
It was long lamented by participants in “nerd culture” that there were, quote: “no girls.”
Well, in recent years nerd culture has become mainstream and girls have started showing up. Now they’ll be taking a part in shaping what the future looks like in fantasy realms. And maybe it’ll result in visions of how technology can make life more fiendishly hilarious and earthy, rather than solely as a frame for heroic action and mayhem. Neko Case and Kelly Hogan have started the brainstorming. Now somebody write the comic.
