Note that this is a change from the syllabus.
Reading:
- Jan Muto (1995) "He Was The Woman Of His Dreams: Identity, Gender, and Kurt Cobain," Popular Music & Society 19(2)
Viewing:
- Both versions of video "In Bloom" posted above (from 1991 album Nevermind)
- Optional viewing: Alternate "all dress" version of "In Bloom" below
Artifact for posting:
- "In Bloom" music video or "Dive" live performance, both posted above
11 comments:
Question:
I would like to know more about his relationship with Courtney Love. What type of woman was she?
Artifact Discussion:
The opening of the video for “In Bloom” cracked me up immediately. The juxtaposition between the naïve screaming fans and Nirvana was so strong. The fans reminded me of Beatles fans or Elvis fans. Before the announcer introduced Nirvana I would’ve guessed that a much mellower and happier band was about to play. When the curtain lifted and I saw Kurt Cobain’s glasses and comb-over I knew that he was trying to make a social statement. The look is not grunge or punk at all. Also, Cobain did not look strained when singing like he usually does. The raspy voice was still in tact though. He seemed so calm when singing, “nature is a whore.” Then the set collapsed and the original conservative image was flipped. The world became topsy turvy. Men are dressed as women. The song broke into a mind blowing guitar solo. Even the planets start beating each other up. The video seemed to reflect Cobain’s personality. At times he was happy and calm, especially when he was with his daughter. Yet, there was an intense angry and emotional side to him. The darker side to the video reflected his rants and angry drawings. The beginning of the video reminded me of the love he showed for Courtney Love, and the end reminded me of his anger and coma after she fell asleep on him. The dichotomy was confusing and intense. Nirvana seemed to be a group of people that bottled up their emotion and waited to explode. They were not the “nice guys.”
Question:
Based off the evidence presented in the article, do you think that Kurt Cobain cross-dressed because he truly identified with femininity, or rather do you think he did so just to break social norms?
Article Discussion:
Nirvana's music video of "In Bloom" is very representative of Kurt Cobain's identity struggle that Jan Muto describes in her article. Cobain was very transgressive, and liked to defy any and every normal social construct. Throughout his childhood, he identified much more so with feminine gender representations, than those of masculinity. Thus, the song "In Bloom" addresses how American culture likes whatever is popular at the time, only because it is popular.
In the music video, Cobain uses his band as a representation of popular music in the 50s such as Elvis Presley, or similarly The Beatles, where fans go crazy because it is socially accepted, and not because they truly appreciate the music. The members of Nirvana are presented as very masculine, in suits, upright, and composed. They are also very "cookie-cutter" with constant smiles and bopping their heads. Then, the music video cuts to scenes of Nirvana cross-dressing, rolling around on the ground, and breaking many other social norms. Cobain also transgresses gender identities by standing over a guitar and thrusting in a sexual motion. Thus, he takes on the role of a female in sexual relations.
What is ironic about this song and the music video is that "In Bloom" was very mainstream when it came out. Nirvana became very socially "normalized" which is exactly what Kurt Cobain stood against. The lyrics are, "He's the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along...but he don't know what it means." Even with these lyrics in this song, Nirvana started be representative of exactly what they hated.
Discussion Question:
In what ways did Colbain think that his daughter seem like him and constituted part of the reason for his suicide?
Artifact Discussion:
Just like how I tried a novel approach to doing the blog post, I decided to try that again for this blog post in order to compare my before-and-after reactions to the posted artifact. Thus, I watched the video for “In Bloom” before reading the article and even looking up the lyrics for the song online. As would be expected for someone who saw the video prior to reading the article and lyrics, I was confused by the performance attire and actions of the Nirvana band members during the video. Kurt Colbain and the men near him dressed similar to him seemed to be emotionally restrained (as their performance was as well), while the other men dressed in more feminine clothes were wreaking havoc on the stage. I was not completely sure about the significance behind this performance, which made me very curious to read the article and look up the lyrics online to find out.
Then, after reading the article, I realized that the cross-dressing of the band members (the ones that are recorded in the “all dress” version of the video) is somewhat like a statement of anarchy. First, what is obvious is that men wearing feminine clothing is a way to rebel against social standards, but what else is present is the fact that these men are tearing apart the stage scenery. They climb on and knock over the building structure behind the drum set, and they proceed to tear down the model planets and related day/night structures. Such actions represent an anarchy against the “order” of society, in which buildings stand upright and objects of the sky stay where they belong. In addition, I looked up the lyrics to “In Bloom” and noticed the revolutionary character of the words. Colbain seems to be describing a male (probably a young man) who “likes pretty songs” and “[to] shoot his gun” but does not comprehend the significance of gun use. Based on what I read in the Muto article, the song seems to reflect Colbain when he was younger and his father forced him to do “manly” things since he was a son. This song is probably a reflection of these past days – and Colbain’s frustrated thoughts about them.
Question: After watching these videos and reading the articles about Cobain’s identity, specifically his gender one, I wonder what still makes Cobain a little masculine. I feel like it is his outer appearance. When compared to artists like Michael Jackson and Prince, it seems like they are more feminine that Cobain; however, Cobain had more feminine personality traits and explored cross-dressing. Now I pose the question: Is it just outer appearance that makes someone more feminine and masculine – perhaps, a first impressions view of looking at people?
Artifact discussion:
I watched Nirvana’s “In Bloom” for this artifact discussion. At first, I was slightly confused to why the set seemed straight out of The Ed Sullivan Show and there were so many teenyboppers screaming at Nirvana. It wasn’t until I saw Nirvana dressed up as what the announcer described as "thoroughly all right and decent fellas.” I immediately laughed when I heard this comment. Their parody on musical performances was humorous and served its purpose to take off some seriousness from the band, if that’s why its purpose was at all. It was a very lighthearted, despite the destruction of the stage, attempt at portraying grunge and punk in a different setting.
However, what struck me the most was the gender play that Nirvana decided to employ. The camera shots would juxtapose the prim and proper band with their perfectly made hair and their clothes pristinely pressed with the untamed men in dresses. I felt like their was something lacking, though, for me to describe Nirvana’s performance or their personalities in feminine, despite them being in dresses. I feel like even though they had dresses on, the tone of the video did not allow me to take them seriously in them – as in, they were assuming the roles of women. I feel this disconnect I was experiencing was a little bit of trying to figure out which “self” I was looking at in Nirvana. The public self? The private self? The stage self? Muto touched on this extensively while looking at the different “selves” of Cobain. I would think that if I saw the personal, private selves of Nirvana in dresses, then I would be more inclined to think its authentic and only then, describe them as feminine.
How is Cobain’s transcendence of gender norms both similar to and different from Mick Jagger’s subversive gender parody?
In the second video, Cobain wears a stuffed woman’s bustier, a skirt, and a tiara, and the drummer dons a bra. Cobain presents himself as a kind of beauty queen, but he sings in a low, masculine voice. In this video, we cannot witness the audience’s reaction, but Cobain plays and sings as if nothing is different about his performance.
In the first Nirvana video, the flashes of cross-dressing imagery appear like subliminal messages. Cobain seems to suggest that his music transcends gender as the staged fans continue to scream for the band while they dance around and make a ruckus in their feminine dresses. The band is clearly rejecting societal norms and precedents set by bands like the Beatles, but the audience reaction stays the same throughout the entire song, suggesting that they either don’t notice or that they approve of the band’s behavior.
I really like the quote that Muto mentions from the magazine Mademoiselle: “The band have steadfastly refused to wear the grunge crown; they would rather wear dresses” (Muto, 70). Perhaps the subliminal flashes of images of the band in dresses represent their rejection of the “crowns” that bands like the Beatles and artists like Elvis have accepted and worn in the past. Although Nirvana initiated the grunge movement, they wanted to represent more than just a musical genre, so their feminine attire separates from and rejects the flannel-and-ripped-jeans uniform of grunge rockers.
Question:
Muto said, "the masculine was tempered in this aspect of self by feminine emotional characteristics. Cobain was described as introspective, moody, and communicatively nurturing" (Muto 76). Is being introspective a feminine quality?
Discussion:
I found it curious that Cobain was wearing a striped blazer, which is more commonly used in womenswear than menswear today. I don't know what was trending in menswear the season of this performance, but it may have been a deliberatively transgressive choice on Kobain's part. He may have been trying to use his clothing to dissociate himself from traditional masculinity. Of course, the man wearing the dress in the video was trying to be gender-transgressive.
Kobain once said, "I definitely feel closer to the female side of the human being than the male - or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be" (Muto 71). I wish I could ask him what he means by that. Muto talks about how passive he was in response to the physical violence that he was subjected to and calls this "more feminine than masculine" (Muto 75). Was it simply his lack of an aggressive mentality that made him feel "feminine"?
The quote also gives me the impression that much like the scholars that Muto cites, Kobain seems to believe that neither masculinity and femininity could exist alone, that one is defined in opposition to the other.
And lastly, I find it ironic that someone who worked so hard to free himself from traditional social roles "relied on traditional role constructions as his savior. To be a husband and a parent, to fit into a more coherent gender identity associated with those roles, brought him relief from the constant tension he faced between masculinity and femininity" (Muto 80). It sounds like as much as he hated being boxed in by the role of "male," he appreciated being "husband" and "father."
Question:
The article seems to suggest that Cobain attempted to seem more masculine – especially in appearance – than he actually was. Do you think Cobain’s struggle with masculinity was a factor that contributed to either/both his artistic success and his suicide?
Artifact Discussion:
I first want to start off by saying that I really liked this song prior to our investigation of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. I was obviously very surprised to see the first music video (All Dress version). Seeing a band of grown men prancing around in dresses as if they were little girls playing dress up is pretty strange to begin with. When record that as the backdrop for a song like “In Bloom” that has a specifically masculine sound with the use of guitar and power chords and Cobain’s screaming voice it makes for a truly odd and even comical experience. I didn’t quite know what to make if this and the fact that they destroy the set until I saw the other video.
The second video is clearly a spoof on the Beatles with the screaming girls, the goofy suits, and the expressionless faces on the artists. The video juxtaposes this with footage of the first video. Together we see that Cobain and his band are making fun of the way bands acted in the 1960’s and pushing the limits of the constricted masculinity to which these bands were held. After looking into it a little, I found that apparently Cobain was tired of being taken so seriously and wanted to show the world that the band had a humorous side. He definitely succeeded in doing that with this video, and even went further to point out the flaws of the public’s perception of “serious” and “masculine”.
Question:
Based on what I read in the article about Cobain wearing dresses and women's clothes it seemed as if he did it to be different from society. I don't think it necessarily fit him and Nirvana, like what Kiss wore fit them. Nonetheless, do you think Nirvana's choice to dress this way was influenced by the popularity that other groups received while dressing the same way?
Discussion:
The article does a good job of painting a picture in the readers head about the identity struggle that Cobain faces throughout his career. After reading and watching the music videos it can be said that Cobain was one of the most transgressive artists that we have studied thus far. It seemed to me that not only him but the whole Nirvana group enjoyed being different from society. They broke every norm imaginable to someone in their profession. When listening to Cobain's music without the images I cant help but picture the artists wearing urban clothing (jeans t-shirts. The wanted to be different in their approach to music and it is something that worked for Cobain and his music. I found the video with them wearing dresses more appealing than when they were wearing suits. Its something that as listeners and fans that you dont expect but appreciate them taking their profession to their to that level.
Question:
If Cobain feels “closer to the female side of the human being than [to] the male” and is not afraid to show this, then is the analysis of Cobain’s attempt to show masculinity (i.e. the analysis of his fascination with guns and the analysis of his hurling himself into the drums) actually faulty and just made up by the analysts themselves?
Artifact Discussion:
In Jan Muto’s article “He was the Woman of His Dreams: Identity, Gender, and Kurt Cobain,” a main point is that Kurt Cobain was searching for his identity all throughout his life. He never felt like he belonged in any specific niche, although he did seem the happiest when he was a father and when he was with his daughter. He took his relationship with Courtney Love very seriously, especially at first, and he viewed sex as a sacred thing. At the same time, for last class we saw the angry, ranting side of Cobain in his journal entries and in his crazy drawings.
When I watched the video for “In Bloom,” I saw all of these facets of Kurt Cobain come to fruition. At first, he seems calm and composed. I noticed that, while the other instrumentalists were bobbing their heads and moving to the music, Kurt Cobain has a straight face and seems to be bottling up his emotion. (Later on, of course, we see that bottled up emotion released.)
The fact that the members of Nirvana cross-dressed in the video seems to be a statement of rebellion and an attempt to defy social norms. The men are dressed as females. However, although they look like the female sex, they do not fit the stereotypical female gender. (Note, sex is a biological characteristic, whereas gender is a social construction.) The expectation is that the female gender act passively and “lady-like,” but the cross-dressed men (appearing as the female sex) instead tear up the stage and knock over the building structures on the stage. These are rather aggressive acts, and they do not really fit with the expected female gender. I think the motive behind this was simply to unleash unruliness on the stage.
Question: Was Cobain’s display of culturally constructed aspects of femininity an act of rebellion or a reflection of internal struggle? Why are the characteristics of femininity so often associated in stark opposition to masculinity and in what ways was Cobain pressured to express one over the other because of his involvement in a particular genre? In what ways might tapping into characteristics of femininity have helped him to cope with his life situations/ experiences?
From watching the posted video, Dive, which consisted of clips of the performance in dresses interwoven into Nirvana’s portrayal of “decency”, I got a sense of the roles that Muto was describing, and the literal performance of gender. However, I wasn’t able to take the clips from the dress scenes as serious depictions of femininity because even though they were wearing dresses, the group members were behaving in manners that were destructive, violent, reckless, sexualized in a “macho” way, and seemingly disoriented at times. It seemed more of a mockery or perhaps a compensation of ideals of masculinity in order to counteract the effeminate dress than it did a gendered performance of the usual ideas of femininity that the article mentions—“passive, connected, relational.” I wondered what sort of reactions the more transgressive performance garnered and whether people were confused or intrigued, or enlightened in some political manner by the performance. Was anyone offended by it? Were women?
The article’s description of Cobain’s ability to embody both femininity and masculinity in his performance and in his personal life doesn’t seem entirely unique to me, in the sense that the qualities and characteristics described are often executed by both males and females depending on the circumstance. However, his decisions to emphasize these roles in public performances may reveal sides of him in the way that he envisioned, which might speak to the title of the article, “He was the woman of His Dreams.” By him performing on stage, perhaps he found solace in the ability to construct for himself what a man or woman or just, Cobain (himself) was, with the degrees of power and vulnerability that he wanted to, not dictated by his father, or by society or anyone else: he could be safe in his music. But was it hiding? Was that a signal of a struggle that existed in his personal life? What was the “faking” that the article mentions, he fell into? Was that what the “decent performance” was? The article’s exploration of some of these ideas help to bring Cobain’s life interactions and his expressions of self to light in a way that may speak to his music and the “intimacy” his performances might actually provide.
Question:
In Jan Muto’s article, Kurt Cobain is described as a man who identified more with his ‘feminine’ side than his masculine side; however, he exhibited masculine behaviors that suggested he was trying to make up for his femininity. Given that Cobain was known for being a societal outcast who didn’t quite fit into any set mold, could the reason for his cross-dressing and other feminine behaviors be that he was trying to figure out himself, rather than trying to play with societal norms? Or could Nirvana perhaps have been trying to turn people off to them? They were known for hating the amount of fame they held (Cobain especially), and maybe they were trying to get rid of some of their audience.
Discussion:
I really enjoyed the music video for “In Bloom.” Though I’ve listened to the song thousands of times, I’d never actually seen the video. I thought it was pretty cool how they showed that there’s two sides to them: the mainstream, clean-cut side, which is loved by screaming girls everywhere, and the rebellious, transgressive, crazy side that tends to be behind-the-scenes. It’s almost like they’re saying: “You think you know us, but what you see isn’t really who we are.”
I also found it interesting how the article mentions that Cobain wanted this video to show how nice and clean-cut Nirvana was. I wonder how much sarcasm there might have been or not been in that statement. Was he trying to say the clean side to them was just a show or was he trying to say that they’re easy-going guys who like to have fun, and therefore can put on dresses and be funny?
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