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Author: Cher Scholar (Page 35 of 102)

Camille Paglia on Miley Cyrus

January 19, 2014 / / 0 Comments

CamileCamille Paglia: you love her or you hate her. She's outspoken and strident and I tend not to agree with her politically or critically and she was not supportive of Chaz's transgendering and has both been critical of Cher's plastic surgery and supportive of Cher's persona on occasion.

But recently my friend Christopher sent me a really good Time editorial by Paglia about Miley Cyrus' recent scandalous performance and it echoes many of the concerns Cher initially had. Her editorial also made many good points about the history of pop music and Madonna, as well:

"…the real scandal was how atrocious Cyrus' performance was in artistic terms. She was clumsy, flat-footed, and cringingly unsexy, and effect heightened by her manic grin.

How could American pop have gotten this bad? Sex has been a crucial component of the entertainment industry since the seductive vamps of silent film and the bawdy big mamas of roadhouse blues. Elvis Presley, James Brown and Mick Jagger brought sizzling heat to rock, soul and funk music, which in turn spawned the controversial raw explicitness of urban hip-hop.

The Cyrus fiasco, however, is symptomatic of the still heavy influence of Madonna, who sprang to world fame in the 1980s with sophisticated videos that were suffused with a daring European art-film eroticism and that were arguably among the best artworks of the decade. Madonna’s provocations were smolderingly sexy because she had a good Catholic girl’s keen sense of transgression. Subversion requires limits to violate.

…

But more important, Madonna, a trained modern dancer, was originally inspired by work of tremendous quality — above all, Marlene Dietrich’s glamorous movie roles as a bisexual blond dominatrix and Bob Fosse’s stunningly forceful strip-club choreography for the 1972 film Cabaret, set in decadent Weimar-era Berlin. Today’s aspiring singers, teethed on frenetically edited small-screen videos, rarely have direct contact with those superb precursors and are simply aping feeble imitations of Madonna at 10th remove.

Pop is suffering from the same malady as the art world, which is stuck on the tired old rubric that shock automatically confers value. But those once powerful avant-garde gestures have lost their relevance in our diffuse and technology-saturated era, when there is no longer an ossified high-culture establishment to rebel against. On the contrary, the fine arts are alarmingly distant or marginal to most young people today.

…

With their massive computerized lighting and special-effects systems, arena shows make improvisation impossible and stifle the natural rapport with the audience that performers once had in vaudeville houses and jazz clubs. There is neither time nor space to develop emotional depth or creative skills.

Pop is an artistic tradition that deserves as much respect as any other. Its lineage stretches back to 17th century Appalachian folk songs and African-American blues, all of which can still be heard vibrating in the lyrics and chord structure of contemporary music. But our most visible young performers, consumed with packaging and attitude, seem to have little sense of that thrilling continuity and therefore no confidence in how it can define and sustain their artistic identities over the course of a career.

What was perhaps most embarrassing about Miley Cyrus’ dismal gig was its cutesy toys — a giant teddy bear from which she popped to cavort with a dance troupe in fuzzy bear drag. Intended to satirize her Disney past, it signaled instead the childishness of Cyrus’ notion of sexuality, which has become simply a cartoonish gimmick to disguise a lack of professional focus. Sex isn’t just exposed flesh and crude gestures. The greatest performers, like Madonna in a canonical video such as “Vogue,” know how to use suggestion and mystery to project the magic of sexual allure. Miley, go back to school!

Read the full piece: http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/27/pops-drop-from-madonna-to-miley/

What Paglia does here is to maintain that sex has always been a part of pop music and that the raunchiness of Cyrus' performance wasn't the issue. It was the emptiness of it. She makes similar critiques of Lady Gaga. From the UK's Sunday Times, Paglia said that

Gaga is a "manufactured personality" who rips off her music and fashion from "Cher, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink." Paglia also disses the star's attractiveness, saying that "Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is." Her sex appeal, or lack thereof, is quite a problem for Paglia: "Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era…"

This is the enduring issue I have with Gaga, not her unsexiness (do we all have to be sexy?), but her flatness, how her artistic gestures are shallow and blatant. I just don't get a message there.

I like how Paglia compares the vapidness of shock for shock's sake between the pop and the art world, and how both fields need something to play against, "subversion needs limits to violate" like Madonna's transgressions against the Catholic Church. Likewise in the art world, if there is no establishment to rebel against, rebellion seems valueless.

I'm also interested in Paglia's concerns about arena shows and how computerized elements "make improvisation impossible and stifle natural rapport." I hope Cher keeps in mind a balance between cool technology and bling-bling effects and allows a spot of unplanned-out intimacy in her new show, understanding the fact that she is beloved to her fans and she could sing on a stool in a pretty dress and charm us all well enough. She is truely much more than "packaging and attitude" (or trust me, I would be bored to tears and would have jumped off the Cher wagon years ago) and defines, all by herself, the "thrilling continuity" of pop music's lineage. I hope someday she takes ownership of that.

She's also naturally sexy (sister to sister, you're time-tested) and thankfully doesn't need to bump and grind a teddy bear.

   

Review of The Lowdown CD

January 19, 2014 / / 1 Comment

LdFor those of you who bought the Lowdown biography CD from 2011, you know by now that half of the product is something you already have, the Maximum Cher biography CD from 1999. What a rip off!

Anyway, I listened to Maximum Cher again while on my trip to Pennsylvania. There are very few Cher audio clips on it (despite the CDs bold promises) and it's mostly a UK-biography told by a female narrator who pronounces her surname funny. The narrator also mistakenly refers to mother Georgia as Georgeanna. The audio biography does tell the stories of Cher’s mother’s almost-abortion, Cher loss of virginity to an Italian neighbor named Jeff and the story shows us a streetwise kid with bad teeth, nose, posture, and complexion and how she created an unapproachable teen persona to hide herself. According to bio, Cher was 7 when she moved to LA. Harold Battiste originally hired Sonny (because he liked his enthusiasm) to do record promotion.

McThe CD does elaborate on the early awkwardness of being unaccomplished performers and how Hollywood looked down on them, seeing Cher as aloof and abrasive and Sonny as a comical and a nasal hippie. The CD details the Princess Margaret Charity Ball fiasco, where Sonny & Cher had to play to the Hollywood elite instead of the teenagers they were used to entertaining and how they experienced sound problems and Cher was amplified too loudly and eventually was cut off. Then Sonny's stand-up routine was seen as bad and offensive. Eventually they were heckled by a drunk and the Hollywood stars laughed at them. It seems traumatic but the narrator remarks how Cher would go on to outshine all of them.

The bio also talks about their The Man from UNCLE appearance, how the script was written for them and how Sonny took a few blows in the fake-fight scene. The bo claims there were 200 guests at Cher's wedding to Gregg Allman. Is that true?

Apparently the Brits loved Mermaids and the “The Shoop Shoop Song” spent five weeks at number one. The album Love Hurts also spent six weeks at number one. The narrator calls the movie Faithful an “excellent film.” Other errors on the CD include the mention that Cher performed the song “Bang Bang” in the movie Good Times, the claim that the Cher show saw its debut mid-1975. The CD makes no mention of Cher's very public affair with Gene Simmons (although it lists her many other lovers, big and small) or anything about her band Black Rose but states that “a friend Jean Simmons offered HER home in NY” to Cher before she found her own apartment. The CD also claims Cher recorded “Many Rivers to Cross” with Beevis & Butthead. The CD calls Cher a “living legend in a two-faced, backstabbing LA” and also “The Queen of Pop.”

Cher The Interview is the second CD in the set and it is a repackaging of various TV interviews going back to the mid-1980s.

  1. No Regrets! is the Cynthia McFadden primetime interview Cher did in 2002 where she talks about always worrying about money, Sonny being scientologist, the interview where she said, “I was as smart as I was gonna get at 40.” She talks about her depression, and how you “make a hand with cards you’re dealt.” She also voices her support of Hillary Clinton in the election, how she knows Hillary and how Jimmy Carter was done-in by his inexperience and she feared the same would happen with Barak Obama.
  2. So Long, Farewell is an Australian Farewell-era interview where they ask her if this is really her last tour and she says, “It’s got to be. It won’t get any better.”
  3. What a Life is the uncomfortable Living Proof-era phone interview with the nervous guy. You feel sorry for him with all his “ums” and his nervous laugher. They talk about what it feels like to be an underdog and how she’s not trying to save NYC with her song “Song for the Lonely.” Cher insists she gives the most about who she is in interviews (I agree with this). She draws attention to the fact that most of her movie roles are not glamorous. They talk about the NYC dance-clubs she used to frequent and the DJs she liked. She said she would go to Studio 54 a couple of nights a week and that she also loved the club Heartbreak in NY. The interviewer asks if “The Music’s No Good Without You” is a reference to Sonny. No. He asks her “What’s a “cell” for you” and she says “hiding yourself.” She calls the tabloids soulless, Godless trash and tells him that pain isn’t worst thing that can happen to you.
  4. The Fame Game is the Matt Lauer interview from The Today Show around the time of Living Proof. She calls “Song for the Lonely” anthemic and she appreciates its grandeur in strength. She talks about coming up in show business, how in 1964 she and Sonny started out rough-edged. They had no stylists or dance instructors. They sewed their own clothes and were definitely “not polished, not perfect but real.” She says today’s atmosphere allows for no work in progress. She says she would trade for Bruce Sprinsteen’s voice in a minute. She says this is her great last tour, that it’s a really good one, and she “not sure how much longer I can cheat death.”
  5. Elephants Are Very Human is the interview Cher did at the premiere for the movie Elephants & Man, a Litany of Tragedy and she talks about riding the elephant Margie around for 3 weeks in Good Times and how Margie was her best friend in that “terrible movie.” She talks about the elephant Billy and how he needs a family and how the LA Zoo still uses cattle prods and bull hooks.
  6. A Life on Film is some pre-Academy Award show interview around the time of Silkwood. Cher says she spent eight years trying to get into acting work, alternated between giving up and making a living. She talks about being the worst auditioner in the world and that Sandy Dennis said her Jimmy Dean audition was the worst she had ever seen but that she was fascinated by what Cher was doing. They joke about how she says Dolly Pellicker in the movie and how they did the car scene (coming to work with Karen and Drew) a million times. Cher said there was lot of Cher in Dolly but Dolly was not her and that changed her walk for the role, make herself more slumped over with downcast eyes and that she was embarrassed by the cup-with-pinky-at-high-tea airplane scene. She said she was intimidated to look “like a truck driver” with no makeup and she found it interesting that Meryl Streep is accepted for her work alone without any curiosity about her personal life or how she looks or what her image is. We find out Cher was the running favorite that year (1983) in the supporting actress category. Linda Hunt ended up winning for The Year of Living Dangerously.
  7. This is a Cher World  This is the Rosie O’Donnell interview around the time of It’s a Man’s World (1996). This is a very important Cher interview because it was a very clear truce after years of publicly dissing Sonny and it occurred two years prior to his death. When people surmise that Cher was an opportunist at Sonny’s funeral and that she had spoken nothing but negative slurs about him prior to his death, I always point to this interview. Rosie leads Cher to say something negative and she stays positive. They talk about how Cher is recognized everywhere (except maybe Japan), their thoughts on David Letterman, how Sonny & cher cheated to make “I Got You Babe” the pick of the week in 1965. Rosie plays with Sanctuary items, and Rosie asks her about when she used to needlepoint before she left Sonny, when she was losing her mind. She says she doesn’t talk to Sonny much and Rosie takes umbrage with Sonny and how Chastity is also angry with him over politics. But Cher sets the record straight regarding their ongoing and permanent connection with each other, how she will always be S&C, and about her fondness for Sonny. Rosie says Sonny wouldn’t be anywhere with out Cher and Cher insists she wouldn’t be here without him either. This is the interview where Rosie hilariously tells Sonny to "sit and spin."
  8. My Dear Daughter is a British interview on the Parkinson Show that included comments by actor Stephen Fry who was sitting next to Cher. She talks about life after Sonny and how she had no experience making decisions and taking care of money, how she was fine with him being the boss until Chastity was born. She said they were full partners on the TV show and that the show came easy to her. She said she couldn’t live like a child with him but that his death was devastating. She thought they’d always be able to argue. They talk about Chastity’s coming out and how she questioned her motherhood afterwards and feared the press would hound Chaz. She said she discovered what her convictions were and about the book Family Outings where she comes across as “the bad one.” She said she wished she had had a different reaction, but that’s the reaction she lives with.
  9. Sonny’s Funeral Speech  This is her speech in full and I always feel uncomfortable listening to it or watching it, as if I don’t really belong in that private space. Hearing it every once in a long while I notice different elements of it. Cher talks about working on it for 48 hours. She talks about Sonny’s enthusiasm and how it swept everyone up and everyone “just wanted to be there.” She talks about how he was Sonny long before S&C and how he loved his friends and cooking (“not eating, tasting”). The speech is well written and an honest and fitting tribute.
  10. I’m Not a Sell Out This is the old Phil Donahue interview of 1985 where she talks about conserving energy, exercising on the S&C show. She talks here about Sonny being not as good a friend to her as she is to him, but that she will always be there for him; they’re just not good day-to-day friends because he treats like she’s 16 years old and “you can’t disagree with him.” She talks about being more than one person and that selling out to her is being one flat identity. I can’t help but think about Dolly Parton when she says this. I love Dolly but she's so oppresively a caricature of a real person.

    

Cher Over the Holiday Break

January 19, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Elton-chershowBefore Christmas, my husband and I watched the SCTV Christmas Episodes on DVD. I’ve been interested in this video ever since I spent the last year watching old variety shows and trying to get an intellectual handle on the genre. My only experience of SCTV as a variety-show parody is from the performances of the hilarious Juul Haalmeyer Dancers, a very camp and hilarious send up of variety show dance troupes. Watch a five-minute documentary on them: http://vimeo.com/82136213).

RickmoranisIn one SCTV episode there is a very funny parody of a piano-duel between Liberace and Elton John that originally aired on Dec 18, 1981. Elton John, played by Rick Moranis, is dressed in what strikes me as a spoof of the outfit and he wore on the Cher show premiere and special from 1975. (See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgH286eOni4).

For Christmas, Mr. Cher Scholar and I (plus the dogs) drove to Pennsylvania to see my parents. It was cheaper and more fun than flying. We stopped along the way in Fort Smith (for historical work Mr. Cher Scholar is doing for the show Quick Draw), Memphis and Nashville. Definitely want to go back to Nashville and see a show and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

PodunkWe played the iPod shuffle for three days both ways. That was plenty of time for the song “Podunk” to come up. I have always been confused by this song and what it was trying to do. Mr. Cher Scholar thankfully did some scholarin and cleared up the mystery for me. He said that Cher and Sonny are actually doing impersonations of Mae West and W.C. Fields. Oohhhhh. But you all probably knew that already. So ok, that makes it mildly better.

SadieTruly, I am a fan of Cher’s Mae West impersonations, both her straight-out Mae West and her Sadie Thompson version. In fact, I think her Mae West is an essential component of her oeuvre of characters on those variety shows and, on top of that, emblematic of the larger media character she came to be. I believe in some ways this song "Podunk" is a very raw precursor to those impersonations. I just think she got better and more organic the next decade.

The Byrds version of “All I Really Want to Do” also came up on the iPod shuffle and I was able to think more about why their version failed in competition with Cher’s in 1965. I think there are definitely tonal problems with the Byrds version. Their version is too crisp and neat for one thing, almost bourgeois neatness, if you can accept the Byrds as bourgeois for a moment. Cher’s version is rougher, more Dylanish, hippie-er, scragglier, much more believable as a hippie/feminist creed coming from Cher. Which brings me to my second point: this song needs to be sung by a woman. It sounds like a creepy manipulation coming from a man. “Suuuurre you just wanna be my friend. Uh huh. Friends with benefits.” From a woman it sounds like an emancipated idea/argument. For these two reasons, Cher’s versions comes across as more authentic.

Over the break I also received this message from my friend Julie about a Cher tweet, She said:

I was looking at something else on twitter so decided to take a look at Cher’s page. This is my favorite one.

.@manthon25 U Haven’t LEARNED!! EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE–My Grandma Picked Cotton,My Mom Scrubbed Flrs,My Shoes had Holes–,I SING IN ARENAS

Cher also popped up in one of my dreams. I was driving a car and she was in the passenger seat complaining to me about how many factual errors this blog contains. I was complaining back to her that perfection is impossible and any attempts to be perfect are paralyzing. This excuse brings to mind a quote Mr. Cher Scholar just gave me from Ben Franklin, (“He who is good at making excuses is rarely good at anything else.”). Anyway, I was discussing with one of our LA friends who visited last week that fan/celebrity meetings seem impossibly stressful and who would want to do it because I would expect a similar dressing-down about my blog’s inaccuracies in person (and that would pretty much rob the fun right out of it). Besides, I’ve always said I'm a fan of the stuff, my activities are rebelliously unofficial and unsanctioned and I have never looked to my celebrity-obsession as a role model or idol. Although, ever since that Miley Cyrus fiasco, I have been brushing my tongue.

On eBay, I purchased recently two magazines from Argentina called Holofote (which means "spotlight"), one on Cher and one on Sonny & Cher (Cher's is entitled, “Cher Super Musa”) and honestly they were too expensive for their size and the very little verbiage they contained (which is all in Portuguese). But for some reason I like them because I like to see how Cher comes across in other cultures. There are 18 pages of photos in each booklet but they are not in any chronological order, which bugs the scholar in me. It looks to be a fan production of "PHOTOS MARAVILHOSAS."

MoonstruckdvdCher-related Christmas presents included this odd ornament-packaged version of the movie Moonstruck and this button ("Ask Me About Cher") which looks like legitimate tour or label produced Cher paraphernalia. My friend bought it at Rockaway Records in Silverlake and he said it was perfect for my Cher Scholar “duties.” He closed the note with this post script: “All I see is Reeeeeeeeeed.” 

ButtonAnyway, I hope you had a good winter break. I came home from Pennsylvania with a cold and have spent the last few weeks hosting out-of-town guests. I’m back in the saddle and ready to blog about the latest Cher bio, Strong Enough. However, I have so much to say about it that I’m going to take it in small chucks: childhood, the 1960s, the 1970s, etc. Can’t wait to get started.

   

Cher Puts Fans in the Driver’s Seat with New Set List

December 8, 2013 / / 1 Comment

 

Set

If you are on the mailing list of Cher.com (which you should be if you are any kind of Cher zombie, Cher freak, Cher crew or Cher lovely), you received an email yesterday about visiting her new tour site and ranking 18 of the 50 listed songs to make your voice heard regarding her upcoming set list.

The voting page is a user-interface-friendly ranking list that even has a weighted top-5 mechanism.

I am continually impressed by Cher’s social media worker-bees. This was not only a generous gesture on Cher’s part, but a totally amazing fun thing to play with. I was chatting away like a Chatty Kathy Cher Zombie while my husband watched snowy football all afternoon, rooting for his Kansas City Chiefs.

Here was my ranking and reasoning (for those interested).

First of all, I did not vote for Turn Back Time, Believe or Dressed to Kill because I figured they would probably end up in the show anyway. Of those three, I would like most to see Dressed to Kill because I think Cher’s team would create a good visual segment and interesting costumes for this.

I also didn’t pick songs I may have liked but have already seen many times before, like The Power, Half Breed, Dark Lady, and Take Me Home.

  1. AllAll I Ever Need is You –  This is one of my absolutely favorite Cher songs, and one of my very top Sonny & Cher songs along with United We Stand and Somebody (all from the same record of 1972). Have never heard Cher sing this song live and would love to hear her sing a Sonny & Cher song she hasn’t done in a long while.
  1. Alfie – What a dreamy thing to hear Cher sing this song after all these years. A overlooked fan favorite.
  1. Sirens – One of my newest favorite Cher songs. I know Cher doesn’t love the ballads as much as the high-NRG songs but the world-wide consensus is that Cher does an unbeatable torch song. This was proven yet again on the new album.
  1. Welcome to Burlesque – Yes, I didn’t love this movie but I feel Cher herself knows more about burlesque, vamping, femme fetals and sexy performance than Steven Antin did and could really do a good visual presentation to salvage this song.
  1. Love Is The Groove—I thought a lot about this one. Cher has done this one live before I believe (was it in Europe?) but the song has such a good energy about it and might coincide well with the Zen-ness in Cher’s life.
  1. Favorite Scars – another favorite of the new album, this song actually made it on my annual best-songs (mostly alternative) of 2013 list I do every Christmas.
  1. Walking in Memphis – I know we’ve seen this one off and on in shows, but it’s such a fun, fan favorite. Even non-Cher-fan friends of mine love her version of this song. It never tires.
  1. The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore – This song was a recent hit with my husband on a car-ride to Kansas City. I think this would be fun, campy song to see done over the top.
  1. Taxi Taxi – I think this too was done before in a medley with Love is in the Groove but it has such ethereal lyrics. Would love to see it for myself in a big Cher shew.
  1. Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves – Of all of Cher’s narrative 1970s number one hits, this one really best holds up in the test of time: the most unique, superbly crafted, full of political hypocrisy and so, so beautiful – a perennial fan favorite. Can’t miss with this.
  1. AlfieI Got You Babe – Has Cher even done a full tribute to this song in concert since the 1970s? It would be good to see that. Also, if this is truly Cher’s last venture in touring, it would be a lovely full-circle moment to close with this song, her first hit.
  1. Song for the Lonely – I think Cher said this one was a hard one to sing so I didn’t place it up toward the top (afraid it would be discarded early on) but similar to Walking in Memphis, fans love this song and non-fans love it too. My non-fan friends actually love it more than Believe.
  1. Real Love – Love the 1970s kitsch of this song, an underdog choice.
  1. Love One Another – Nominated for a Grammy and would love to hear it live.
  1. Dov'è l'Amore – Good for some multi-cultural flavor.
  1. Save Up All Your Tears – My favorite Cher power ballad. Her best version of “Strong Enough/Woman’s World/grrrl-power kick-ass-ness.
  1. Many Rivers To Cross – I love Cher's version of this. Recently added it to an album of Jimmy Cliff I made up for my Dad. Although I first decided “loved it but seen it”…it might be interesting to hear Cher revisit this song again after 20 years.
  1. Bang Bang – The same can be said with this song. I don’t much want to revisit it again with the same ole same ole 1980s arrangement. But this song is one of Sonny’s most re-recorded. It’s arguably his masterpiece if one must judge it by how many diverse artists keep re-recording it and how they can deftly mould its moods.

See my ranking: http://tour.cher.com/my_set.php?me=276563

Create your own: http://tour.cher.com/set.html

In other news:

Cher News (via Boston Q) was kind enough to excerpt Cher’s favorite albums list and Top 10 Cher Commandments from Q Magazine. Homework for our next meet-up (which due to Christmas duties, may be a little while): http://www.chernews.blogspot.com/2013/12/q-magazine-interview-chers-10.html

       

New Additions to the Cher Doll Christmas Tree

December 8, 2013 / / 1 Comment

7It's Christmas time again and so that means it was also the time to put up the Cher doll Christmas tree last week and take blurry pictures of it with my iPhone.

This first picture shows my favorite Cher outfit and doll outfit (Foxy Lady) from the Cher show. And since full episodes of that show have not been re-aired in totally, I'm really enjoying reading about them episode by episode in thew new Josiah Howard book.

 

 

 

  

 

6The Mother Goose outfit from The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour was this year's addition to the tree. Love it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I located a Santa hat for the Sonny angel, procured from the head of a little stuffed bear. When I removed the hat from the bear, there was a smaller Santa hat underneath glued to the bear's head. This was a superfluous hat!

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Was also able to fulfill a life-long dream…which was to live in a house with a fireplace mantle so I could put my Mego Cher makeup head on it for Christmas. I ordered a child's size Santa hat which ended up being too big (but which is working in a sultry kind of way). Because the Mego makeup head is bare-shouldered, she looked a bit too naked for my Aunts who will be visiting next weekend. So I added the jester neck piece (which I bought for my dog Franz two years ago).

Merry Christmas to all the festive Cher Zombies around the world!

   

Cher Recipes for Food Holidays

December 1, 2013 / / 1 Comment

JaneSince we’re in the season of big family dinners, it might be fun to bright out the plethora of Cher recipes out there if you’re needing some Cher-themed inspiration for the holidays.

When I was in Junior High, I fell deeply into the world of celebrity self improvement and fitness. This started with Jane Fonda’s book, The Jane Fonda Workout. Christie Brinkley had a good book called Christie Brinkley’s Outdoor Beauty and Fitness Book. I also had Victoria Principal’s The Body Principal, Revlon’s The Art of Beauty and Raquel ChristieWelch’s yoga book, The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program. It was really hard to learn yoga from a book of still shots. Later I got into Susan Powter’s madness.

Fit
But I can honestly say, the long-awatied Cher beauty book with Robert Haas, Forever Fit, was the best of the bunch. Not only was it the most well-rounded, it was the least self-obsessed. It wasn’t filled with copious amounts of Cher photos and had very balanced and real advice and included a big recipe section of low fat foods, about 58 pages of recipes for breakfast, appetizers, soups, dressings and spreads, salads, sides, entrees, breads and desserts. The book also has a chapter on skin care.

Her later exercise tapes were more interesting for the same reason: she didn’t put herself out Victoriathere as an expert, just a student like the rest of us. Although those wacky exercise outfits were nutty!

Swingers
RaquelSo I always enjoy dipping back into celebrity Cher recipe books and just found another one online: Singers, & Swingers in the Kitchen, recipes to get hung-up on compiled by Roberta Ashley in 1967. Celebrities included: The Byrds, Leonard Nimoy, Paul Revere, The Mamas and the Papas, all the Monkees, Sam the Sham, Leslie Gore, Carol Burnett, The Buckinghams, Paul Anka, the Rolling Stones, Bobby Vinton, Donovan, Herman’s Hermits, Marlo Thomas, The Yardbirds, Larry Hagman, Jane Fonda, Bob Denver, Eva Marie Saint, Bobby Darin, Sally Field, Barbara Streisand, Soupy Sales, Liza Minnelli, Don Adams, Petula Clark, The Supremes, Simon and Garfunkel and some others I’ve never heard of.  It’s a slim 96-page book. Sonny & Cher are in the middle with a pork chop recipe and this intro:

Revlon“Sonny & Cher shared a pizza the afternoon they met. That was the day they both had jobs as background singers at a recording session. It’s been Italian food ever since. Cher doesn’t really know how to cook many dishes, but she’s learned a couple to please husband Sonny, who is Italian. At any rate, they always keep a gallon of olive oil on hand, and lots of different kinds of pasta. Sonny always cooks the pasta, and often have it with one of Cher’s specialties.”

It’s good for a game of Catch the PR Spin. Serve with spaghetti

Flax

Mrs. Flax’s Fun Fingerfoods was a promo piece created for the movie Mermaids. Although I didn’t love this 1990 movie, I am charmed by this little book of six pages of finger foods depicted in the film, from frozen fruit kebobs to BLT bites.

Ennis
Cooking for Cher by Andy Ennis is probably the mother of Cher recipe books. There are about 200 pages of recipes and includes a section on Cher’s pantry, kitchen equipment and chapters on starters, soups, seafood, pultry, meats, vegetarian courses, veggies, desserts and extra material of Cher guidelines to being lean, a 10 day diet and menus for special occasions.

All books have interesting biographical information and are fun to try, especially in competition with other celebrity cookbooks. I competed directly with a Jack Nicholson fan in Cher Zine 2 for entrees, sides and in a fat-free muffin-off.

  

The C-Word, Best Foot Forward, Cher History and Thanksgiving

December 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

CherfeetI just spent an hour working on this post and my Firefox crashed. For the love of God! But my arms are shot and so it’s mostly lost forever. Here is a slim overview of what I said.

Cher scholar Robrt sent me a message reminding me about a good photo of Cher’s feet from the 1970s. I loved this photo as a child: the hair, the tan, the feet, the hand posture, the look, the accent over the E.

Cher scholar Michael sent me an email discussing the negative implications of Cher using the C word. I never got around to covering this last week. I was so wrapped up in talking about the ironic response. I do support people “taking back” negative word meanings. Gay and queer are a good examples of reclaimed words. Third wave feminists believe they can reclaim the words bitch, slut and whore, disemboweling them of their power to offend. However, not everyone agrees words can be reclaimed of their power to hurt. And when groups do try to reclaim words, this can cause confusion between culture groups. For instance, when gay men say something is “so gay” or when black men use the N word, many people can't understand the nuances of one group owning rights to certain words. However, I do believe language is always in process and undergoing change. I do think Cher meant to use the word pejoratively thought (much like Alec Baldwin last week when he used the f**g*t word). She meant the word to be insulting. In this case, we have to ask ourselves, why is this meaning assumed to be negative? Why is a woman’s va-JJ such a bad thing it can so easily be hurled as an insult by men and women?

I’m reading a book now by Kim Addonizio where she discusses writing about sex and the glam-box (my new term). She says the c-word comes from the Middle English word cunte. Middle English. Huh.

 Another friend also sent me word of Cher’s comments about Thanksgiving:

"Thanksgiving is a day to see family, eat food together and watch a movie…Not 2 celebrate the beginning of a GREAT Crime… We gave them Blankets laced w/ Smallpox,” Cher concluded.

This is interesting to me in light of my raised consciousness while working at the Institute of American Indian Arts last year. Some hot button issues in that community, (issues mainstream American is completely oblivious about), would be Thanksgiving and wearing their ceremonial clothing as costumery. I don’t know how Indian activists feel about Cher’s representations as Indian over her career; but I do think that since she has that history of costumery, because she claims Indian heritage, this is a positive statement from her about American Indian consciousness and makes available a high level of public awareness.

Lady-Gaga-The-Muppets-Holiday-Spectacular-will-air-on-November-28-for-ThanksgivingSo after I questioned Lady Gaga’s ability to do variety TV last week, she goes and does a Thanksgiving special with the Muppets. I had no idea and didn’t see it. Was she any good? The ratings were bad according to reports. I wonder if American might be suffering brand confusion with Gaga (similar to what American experienced with Cher between her Vegas shows, Sonny & Cher on TV and the Allman & Woman and Black Rose products and tours). Gaga did topless photos in V Magazine. She releases a meta-single called “Applause” and then does work with the Muppets. Is she an adult or all-American act?

Am loving the new Cher bio. Am very impressed with the copious amounts of research and interviews Howard has done. Am learning a lot and finally, another Cher historian who cares about surname spelling!

For next week: Cher on Vivement Dimanche — see the clip on Cher News. 

   

Cher Feets and Tweets

November 21, 2013 / / 3 Comments

CherfeetI finished reading The Guardian piece. I found Cher's response comment to Sinead O'Connor about women as sex objects interesting in light of all the Vamp skits I've been watching and their  representations of femme fatales. In fact, in most skits on the shows, Cher characters portray a powerful sexuality. But unlike femme fatals prior, her character always comes out on top (no pun intended). More on that later. Cher also talks about how violence in video games is a much bigger problem (such as Grand Theft Auto), and how although Sonny wasn't a "great statesman," he had the ability to bring everyone to the table, Democrats and Republicans. She also speaks candidly about Burlesque and she elaborates on the Salvador Dali, Sonny and Francis Ford Coppola dinner story.

I also read the Facebook Q&A excerpted on Cher News. She talks about a fun Cher Show halloween party, hints around about her tour's opening act and tells a story about her mom buying art supplies after receiving a tax refund. She says she'd like to perform in the play The Glass Menagerie on Broadway (that would be sweet!) and tells her fans "her imperfections are boundless." But in a Zen equation that also means her perfections are boundless. She also says that if there are fires at the house, she always grabs one jacket she doesn't even like.

Fires at the house? Plural? Who is the pyro in Cher's house?

ACherfeet2lso in recent Cutsie news (I can't remember the full Cutsie News jingle or I'd regurgitate it here), Cher had foot surgery last week as she mentioned on Twitter. She's probably crutchin-it-up at home. Her friends and fans have wished her get-well-soons. I'm attaching Cher foot photos here for positive foot energies. Take care of your feet,  some Buddhist said. I've seen quite a few Sonny & Cher videos of her dancing around like Mother Nature. I hope she can do this again soon.

Her final twitter wishes pre-surgery were about throwing in the  "Tea-haddists" and she got into a tweet-fight this week with Sarah Palin, a spat that is full of ironies. Cher said thusly: 

"Go to a dictionary and look up the 'C word'… Next to the definition, you'll see a picture of Sarah Palin! No… wait… she's under 'dumb C word''."

Sarah Palin posted a response from her brother:

"Dear Cher, I was sorry to hear that you tweeted out such vile comments about my little sister yesterday. It's sad because Sarah has never had a harsh word to say about you. In fact, our grandmother was one of your biggest fans. Have a good night, Chuck"

This is interesting on many levels. First of all, Palin's brother must be working 24/7 to defend his defenseless sister. At the end of the day, if you dish it out, you gotta be able to take it, lady. But at least Chuck's sentences have subjects that match their predicates. His message is condescending in tone ("I was sorry to hear about you," a common bullyish tactic along the lines of "I pity you.") The use Cher-Feet-318319 of the words "vile comment" is terribly and comically ironic when used to defend Sarah Palin (who basically traffics in vile and offensive comments). Does Cher care what Palin might have said about her personally? Many of us are not upset about what Palin has said about us personally, but rather what she has said about other people and groups. So that's a pointless point. And finally, he tries to take a jab at Cher's age and hints at her being a has-been only grandmothers were into. This is ironic in light of the fact Cher has been dominating younger acts on Billboard and being invited to appear on the highest-rated TV shows. But conservatives love to throw out this attack at Cher. It defies logic, showing yet again that wishful thinking trumps reality-based thinking. If Cher's such an old has-been, why do her tweets bother them so much? Plus it just sounds weak, along the lines of "nana nana boo boo, stick you head in doo doo." 

Read all about it on Cher News. This way you can avoid having to visit reactionary conservative websites, which are the only ones talking about this story right now.

To read for next week: Cher News reports on Cher favorite song list from BBC Radio.

   

My Sonny & Cher Mesostic

November 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

RrrSo one of the reasons I've been lagging at posting in the last few weeks is I've been finishing up a University of Pennsylvania MOOC (massive open online course) on Modern American Poetry.The class (attended worldwide by about 35 thousand people!!) was haaaarrd. Harder than the graduate poetry classes I've taken. Not only did it require hours of lectures and four essays but the poems were mostly experimental and difficult, starting with Emily Dickinson and going through head-scratching modernists like Gertrude Stein, the language poets and experimental conceptual poets. Our last essay tasked us with writing a mesostic poem.

A mesostic is similar to an acrostic poem (where a word spells down the left spine of the poem) exFin-ale-c06442-dcept a word gets spelled down the middle and the source text is a jumble of words from a "found" text. There's a complicated set of rules on how to select individual words from the "seed text" that has now been developed into a computer program developed for an experimental poet named Jackson Mac Low and used heavily later by experimental artist John Cage.

We were asked to find a source text and pour it into an online program called a Mesostomatic. The program would do the calculations and produce poems for us based on the formula. Since this is not typical creative authorship, it is called writing by "chance operations." Most people think this type of writing is hooey but some writers believe lovely art can come from chance operations (Jackson Pollock was one) and some fans of these mesostics call the program an "oracle" for the eerie results it produces. I believe humans read into all art something of themselves. If you want to see something, your mind will see connections. And that's the real oracle about it. But whether you believe in divine intervention or the power of the human mind, it's all fun.

Since I've been in Sonny & Cher TV Land for so many weeks, I decided to use Sonny & Cher lyrics. I also had to choose "spine words" for my poems, those words that flow down the middle. And I had to produce an essay "explicating" (reading meaning into) the output. Here's what I did:

"My source text is composed of three of Sonny’s three most popular songs (composed for Cher to sing: “Bang Bang” from 1966,  “The Beat Goes On” from 1967, and “I Got You Babe” from 1965), and one song lyric that was a collaboration in authorship that included Cher (a 1973 reworking of a Seals and Crofts lyric for the song “Chastity Sun,” a tribute to Sonny & Cher’s then-daughter Chastity—now Cher's son, Chaz Bono).

The spine terms I chose were BIOGRAPHY (because Cher text raises many questions of reinvention, identity, drag, authorship and autobiography); SONNYANDCHER (because the lyrics—and Chastity—were all “authored” in some way by Sonny and Cher); DAUGHTER (in light of Chaz Bono’s 2051624609_c4e89a63b7 recent gender reassignment and the fact that Sonny and Cher both conceptualized their child as a daughter); and the term POSINGATARTIFICE (“posing at artifice” because Sonny and Cher have consistently attracted controversy around the idea of “being artificial”). This final long phrase, however, seemed too much for the Mesostomatic and returned the least amount and the least sensical results.

Because “posing at artifice” produced no usable results, I made that the title of the completed set. I deleted the mesostics I didn’t like, added punctuation, a word or two (noted with an asterisk), and re-ordered them.

The results were very cryptic and I definitely used matrixing (a term from the show Ghost Hunters for the human tendency to try to make meaning from noise) to make my meaning. My biggest “ah-ha” moment in this exercise came with an awareness that being a fan (of anything including poetry) involves the same kind of matrixing.

The formatted poems are attached here: http://cherscholar.typepad.com/files/posing-at-artifice.pdf [13 KB]

In Section 1—Biography, I see black as dealing with being an outsider and a fighter, juxtaposed with the idea of Sonny & Cher music as light music for teenyboppers. The emphasis on rhythm connects to Sonny Bono’s emphasis on the rhythm section when producing albums. 

The next stanza refers to lines from “The Beat Goes On” and speaks to “times a-changing” in the mid-1960s. This stanza into the next continues with the idea of perseverance (“climbing, I got so tight”) and asks, are hits proof of value? I tampered with the line (changed his to make it hits…it was so close!), but you can find a feminist reading if you revert the word to “his.” The stanza ends with a kind of a confrontation of the 1960s term baby or babe.

The next stanza can be read as Cher’s image-making and costumery juxtaposed with her alter-ego as a activist tweeter, ending with the Sonny & Cher ethos of simplicity and togetherness.

Section 2 deals with Chaz Bono and his struggles in being Chastity (how she grew “Round”), how he altered his life and “his-tory” and gained “gROUND” in transformation. Stanza two deals with sexual identity and rage, ending with an emblematic sign of femininity/sexuality, the miniskirt. Stanza three brings God into the picture. I was surprised how many times the Mesostomatic invoked God from the text. I read this stanza as ‘God is Good,’ as an affirmation of sorts.

Section 3 is more universal and asks us not to over-intellectualize history and culture (good luck with that) and possibly is the machine's subtle dig at my attempt to make “posing at artifice” a spine word, although history has changed music by changing the means of production, creating a mass-production consumer culture, especially affecting young girls.

Stanza two says “I got this, baby,” an understanding of the hidden perils of innocence, who God ultimately loves, and how endings are beginnings. The third stanza is one that brought the most chills. We kiss Sonny goodnight (in death) and the stanza expresses a kind of one-ness between Sonny, God, and Chastity as all coming from the same source.

I included a coda of the scraps the Mesostomatic generated after each spine word grouping. Again God is invoked, along with will and hesitation."

So, the point of this is to show how explicating art takes work and some amount of matrixing and that randomly generating things can be pretty at times.

I created a page for this Sonny & Cher Mesostic (including youtube song clips of the source text and references) from: https://cherscholar.com/cherblog/sonny-cher-mesostic.html

 

My Sonny & Cher TV Study

November 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

HopejacksonsI had a breakthrough last week on my survey of the Sonny & Cher television shows. The project all started when someone wrote in to Cher Scholar to ask about a particular Vamp episode (where the characters whine for Caesar). I've always felt bad that I've never attacked this huge oeuvre of work with any real scholarship. I had just watched all of The Mary Tyler Moore Shows in a row this summer and given up cable for a while so this seemed like a good time to open out the Cher tome of television.

I have to tell you, I've found so much to talk about: memes, subtexts, latter-day ironies. Look for this to be the centerpiece of Cher Zine #4. Not this year, maybe next year. But anyway, I finally found the episode my scholaring student was seeking. It was a Vamp skit from The Sonny & Cher Show (which I'm calling the Yellow show as opposed to the Orange show), episode #9, starring Tony Randall as Caesar and Cher as Cleopatra. She's an unusual Cleo this time, however, doing either her Mary Hartman impression or rather more like a whiny Laverne Defazio. (Is there a non-whiny Laverne Defazio?) It's actually very funny but, sadly, not to be found on the youtubes or in any online stills.

I also recently found outrageous evidence of Cher actually ordering a pizza! I was so shocked I captured it with my smartypants phone. As you may know, Cher and Kathy Griffin claim Cher does not, in fact, know how to order a pizza. I'm surmising she may just not know how to look up the pizza parlor phone number. She should channel her inner Rosa.

(Note: I really loved the King Kong hand skit when I was 7 in 1977).

 

Mr. Cher Scholar has been passing through as I've been going through some of these episodes and he said the other day how self-aware Sonny and Cher were and how he couldn't fathom any acts today willing to be so self-deprecating on a show. He said, could you imagine Lady Gaga being the butt on a joke? I wonder if maybe young pop stars might do it once or twice for fun…but I do think many stars today construct their "images" with hyper-sensitivity and would be afraid to take the piss out of themselves week after week. I don't know how many times I've heard the name Bono taken in vain over the past four months. And not only do I have trouble imagining pop stars doing this, I'm having a hard time imagining comedians doing it. Dave Chappelle comes to mind. But you can't have good variety showings without self awareness (see Carol Burnett).

I'm about 4 or 5 episodes from watching all I have available to watch. But I keep finding more in my garage. So many people have sent me episodes over the years, very degraded VHS copies hidden in tucked-away places. One year, my ex sent me some tapped off of VH1s 7 Days of Seventies; one year I begged my friend to send me some from TV Land; in 1999 I bought some on the underground market; some have been legitimately released on VHS and DVD. It's taken me time to catalogue them and match them up to online and book lists. 

As I said, I have plenty of deep scholarly thoughts about the shows and their effects on culture and culture's effects on them, covering topics like

  • Evolving race relations in the early 1970s
  • The evolving roles for women and how the show operated in reaction to and in ironic support of feminism
  • Sexuality and the femme fatale

I'm really enjoying this project and it's interesting for me to think about how the shows are perceived in hindsight and how they may have been perceived at the time.

   

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