This Is Cher, Cher Zine 3 is being photocopied in a very underground, zine-like manner even as we speak.
Category: Scholarship In Action (Page 10 of 15)
Do you think Cher wears faux-furs when she tweets? What do you think Sonny would tweet? Are you following the Cher tweets? I wonder if an autobiography can be strung from twitter tweets.
I decided to read all the tweets through from 11 September 2010 back to the first tweet 4 May 2010 and do what a good Cher scholar
would do and categorize them.
There are 3 tweets about twitter, for example:
“Thank you to our 10,000th Apple Ping fan and to our soon to be 25,000th Twitter follower”
9/11
ugh…those numbers hurt my head.
“My friend said I was tweeting “ANGRY STUFF”
“Is “ANGRY STUFF” a FELONY or MISDEMEANOR? Does this mean im gonna do hart Time in
Twitter Hell?
6-29
18 Tweets about work, for example:
Leavin LV head’n 2 the Bu! Gotta get home pick out gazillions a clothes etc! 4 Burlesque Photo shoot on 2nd!
5/31“Worked till the WEE hrs Of the a.m. doing photo shoot 4 Burlesque
I think it might b really great!! But ya never know I worked my Ass off & loved every 6 inch heel wearing min!!!
6/3“Burlesque POSTER is absolutely the COOLEST one I’ve EVER been on! Lucky Me! Almost 100 &
STILL Doing what I love”
9/9
I wish she'd stop saying she's almost 100 already! It’s making Me feel OLD.
11 Tweets about Cherities
20 Tweets about Beauty
6 Tweets about Vacation
3 Tweets about Ron Z.
3 Tweets on Cher History
I love these b/c they showcase what an amazing life she's had in the business.
Heard Joni Mitchel’s Court & Spark We were friends while she was recording it & she would play riffs
bout 3ish am after coming homeFrom studio! The lyrics r amazing & Joni is a great artist! Gettingolder as an artist is hard! U still have the
love & the need& the ART has NO IDEA How Old the Artist is!
7/9
3 Tweets about Life and Spirituality
Pema Chodrom books lifesavers for me! Keep 2 mini ones in my purse! My Rinpoche says I’m “Hard
case” he’s right!
6/26
and
Sometimes it’s just better to go to bed & try again tomm!
6/22
6 Tweets that might be about politics…they are vague so I’m not really sure
and 5 Completely Mystery tweets (and again these might cross over with politics)
God Bless the South
6/3
I have lived in many houses
But not as yet a yurt.
Poet Thomas Lux
I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the link that Cher scholar JimmyDean pointed out last week: Architectural Digest's online retrospective of a sampling of Cher's homes (not all of their features are covered).
http://www.architecturaldigest.com/homes/features/2010/07/cher_slideshow#slide=1
There have been so many Cher homes, probably even a yurt somewhere in there, truth be told. But I have only three that I'm sentimental about, having lived in none of them: The S&C house on Carrolwood in Bel Air; the Egyptian house from the Barbara Walter's interview, and the last Malibu house with the infinity pool. But because Carrolwood was captured on the back of the S&C All I Ever Need is You album, I never tire of seeing pictures of it.
I've never seen this photo above before. Do you remember from the S&C Comedy Hour that video with Sonny and Chastity running around the house grounds?
..or the Bittersweet White LIght album jacket from 1973?
…or imagine Cher and Robert C. talking into the wee hours on these couches of her New York City triplex?
…or the family Christmases in Aspen?
Click any picture above to enlarge.
I find Cher scholarship everywhere…even when I'm wallowing in high-art subjects like French writers. Listening to a books on tape during my daily commute, I've been enjoying the biography of Marcel Proust by Edmund White.
At one point, he talks about how Proust enjoyed writing “voluntary pastiche” (or impersonations) of famous society types, writers and actors of the day. He called them voluntary because he was willfully impersonating them in order not to “involuntarily” copy them later on in his own works. In other words, he did send-ups of other famous writers to get their iconic styles out of his system.
White states that Proust liked to pick writers like Flaubert and avoided others like Voltaire because their “simple and straightforward style was difficult to parody,” White continues, “just as Drag Queens avoid doing unadorned beauties such as Audrey Hepburn and are inspired by highly-constructed women such as Mae West and Barbra Streisand.”
Interesting way to put it: highly-constructed woman vs. simple and straightforward. It's the best reason I've heard put forward as to why certain celebrities are more easily and wantonly impersonated. If something is organic or direct, there’s no layer of added style to grab on to. And reasonably, it would be hard to do something as inauthentic as the art of impersonation on subjects so intensely authentic.
Okay, so usually there's the ubiquitous paparazzi shot of Cher in a clown-white beauty mask walking to her car from a Beverly Hills health clinic or spa. In fact, I've been fatigued by all the most recent paparazzi shots. Are they really worthy of re-posting and consuming? But then these shots pop up this week: Cher on the beach (okay, not unheard of) but actually enjoying the water…what an anomaly! I almost can’t get my head around it. There was that paparazzi shot back in the 80s of Cher sunbathing on a boat with her ass tattoo unveiled. These things exist, I suppose. It’s just not as common for us to see Cher frolicking in the surf as it is to see Cameron Diaz doing it. Beauty mask shot is much, much more common. Flipping off the a-hole taking the picture…not at all unusual.
Do you think we’ll ever uncover pictures of Marlene Dietrich or Katharine Hepburn in the ocean??
No.
Well, we did see Katharine Hepburn golfing, I guess. But I don’t think my astonishment has as much to do with the intrusions of the paparazzi, (which are granted and I feel an uncomfortable voyeur's guilt), as much as I am surprised with the idea that this is a sport of Cher’s time and she's partaking of it in spite of us.
It’s a weird moment of Cher being a media object and stubbornly refusing to be a media object. Of Cher being timeless (more and more becoming part of the secured rank of Hollywood's old glamor guard) and her being solidly, modernly of her time.
Oh, for Christ's sake, I’m starting to talk like Proust now!
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/usa/2914350/Boardings-Cher-bliss.html#ixzz0jnknUAlu
Cher has been caught having a fantastic time enjoying paddle boarding off the Hawaiian Island of Maui. Cher has a little trouble at times keeping her balance, but the pop queen ended up walking on water.
Walking on water? See? We jestly deify. We make timeless. Yet by paddle boarding, she stays in resolutely in time.
How would Cher handle a date who had passed out into his plate of pasta?
The College Code of Cher, by Sara Cox, is all about how college students should take the advice of Cher songs and date like an empowered woman. Things start off with a nifty description of Cher and introduction of the article's premise…
As an iconic American performer, Cher is a woman known by all. In fact, we know some pretty intimate details about her life. However, very few of us appreciate the sound advice that her melodies and lyrics have to offer. College is a time in our lives when many of us are deeply involved in the dating game. We suffer through multiple break-ups, back-ons and variations of the word ‘commitment’ during our time on the college campus. As dating faux pas occur commonly on college campuses (often, embarrassingly enough, in public places), I offer you the words of Cher to curb your dating mishaps and to help you further enjoy your time in the college dating circuit.
Can melodies offer advice…technically? I only dated one person in college. I feel like I missed the whole "circuit."
What follows is an explications of "I Got You Babe" with its lightness and fun:
Enjoy the relationship without taking it or yourself too seriously, “Let’s see what happens” isn’t the worst thing a friend or loved one can say.
Then, we look more deeply into the song, "If I Could Turn Back Time":
Don’t be distracted by the thong and sailors in the video; Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” can teach us to select our words carefully in a disagreement with our significant other as well as to admit when we are wrong…We should all take a look in the mirror when reading this page of the Code of Cher and make a conscious effort to up the level of foresight as well of maturity in all of our collegiate romantic encounters.
Code of Cher. Sounds more like a perfume than a manifesto. But what about "Believe"?
Don’t be the subject of Cher’s song, BE CHER: end the relationship, move on, and don’t let lingering bitterness get in the way of the happiness that you deserve! When Dating in College, Live by the Code of Cher.
Thank you, Sarah Cox. That's actually not bad advice for anybody in the early stages of dating no matter what their age. And I would add that in my experience people will mirror back to you what you project to them. So pick your attitude wisely: gloomy and needy or wise yet fun.
http://buquad.com/2010/03/16/when-dating-in-college-live-by-the-code-of-cher/
Cher parties for her 100th Caesars show; Cher Scholar parties for the sake of scholarship.
Yes, I missed a week of blogging and I have no real good excuse. All I can say is that I've been very tired from overtime at work and negotiations and all I've wanted to do was read the novel The Lost Night by Rachel Howard.
However, I did do my Cher duties last Saturday night when I threw a dinner and video-viewing party to gather some material for the next Cher zine. My husband was an amazing sport about the whole thing, helping me cook for 7-8 fans, semi-fans and non-fans, including me. All were tasked with sampling food for the obligatory zine food article and commenting on 27 of 28 Cher videos. I cut the live video "All or Nothing" when guests started getting antsy. Yes, I realize the irony of cutting a song called All or Nothing from a long Cher-video-watching party. But I was facing a mutiny! Sacrifices had to be made for the more artistic "The Music's No Good Without You" and "Song For the Lonely" videos.
John cut his finger cooking, among other sacrifices, but helped me pull it together. Overall it was a trying and tiring party. People crapped out at pretty much at video 16…but we had some interesting discussion as to what makes a legitimate video. Most agreed TV and movie segments do not count, only a promotional film EXCLUSIVELY made to sell a single, not as content for one’s other projects. The food was a hit (with everyone else, not so much with me). My friend made a very delish jello though, as a cross-over project for her blog, Julie and Jello, which is a take-off on the book Julie and Julia.
Anyway, there are some awesome, awesome things coming in the next zine. Notes on the director's screening of Mask, interviews with pop-culture feminists (so awesome), an essay on the Phoenix, Arizona, sites for the movie Chastity,and a new piece on the new Cher dolls that have come out since the last zine.
However, we can still use a bit more content. If anyone has any personal experiences of being a Cher fan that you would like to share, please contact me.
There was some real Cher peripheral news buried in last week’s paparazzi blitz and blurbs about Chaz and Cher attending the Melrose art opening at Kantor Gallery, that being that it was Elijah Blue’s inaugural show “Step-and-Repeat” they were there to see.
Slideshow the exhibit (seems to work on and off): http://www.kantorgallery.com/exhibitions/elijah-blue/
Full Press release by Kantor: http://www.hustlerofculture.com/me_we/2010/02/la-elijah-blues-stepandrepeat-022410-042410.html Excerpts:
”Step-and-Repeat” reflects on the amalgamation of the corporatocracy and celebrity cultures through use of the step-and-repeat wall, a staple at red-carpet events. Manufactured quickly and brandished with corporate logos, these backdrops are signage for the biggest sponsor, lacking any aesthetic substance; Blue has shifted the paradigm and forged carefully hand-painted panels. Using a photorealistic approach, he suggests that celebrity personalities have merged with these backdrops, becoming a single entity of commerce. “The celebrity and the backdrop are the same thing, they are both billboards, they have fused,” says Blue. The wordage of Blue’s logos, such as ‘Ivory Tower’, are the punch line and heart of his reflections, underlining his conclusions on the condition of celebrity, aiming fame back at itself. The installations themselves are so meticulously crafted that it is hard to differentiate between these process heavy painted panels and the “one-night-stand” of traditional, cheaply made step and repeat panels.
I love this idea, I really do. I guess it could have been more sassy and less realistic, or more claustrophobic to show the proliferation of these events/brand-attacks. But as they were hand-painted, okay it may have taken some time to do. Which is all just to say I crave more of what is a good thing.
In addition to the three large installations based on the traditional step and repeat wall, the exhibit will feature five smaller works that have the essence of the larger pieces as they reflect through Blue’s carefully chosen logos the relationship between celebrity and the corporatocracy.
The Artinfo.com review: http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/34030/elijah-blues-step-and-repeat-at-kantor-gallery/
For his first fine art exhibit, Elijah Blue chose the ubiquitous "step and repeat" wall as his medium — the bland, heavily-branded backdrops that lurk behind celebrities at red-carpet events. Impersonal yet intimate, familiar yet sinister, "Step and Repeat's" underlying irony was so pointed it may have traveled directly over the heads of the dozens of celebrities who attended the opening Wednesday at Los Angeles' Kantor Gallery. "A lot of people in the room were looking at art that they may or may not have realized was commenting on their very existence," said Blue via phone the next day. "And that was, in retrospect, crucial to driving the point home."
Hand-painted with precisely chosen faux-corporate logos, Blue's seemingly innocuous walls are a scathing commentary on "the contemporary celebrity condition, it's arc over the last 50 years, and the cheapening of fame," as the 33-year-old puts it. It's a wry, post-Jersey Shore commentary that Blue, whose mother happens to be Cher and whose father happens to be Gregg Allman, is eminently qualified to make.
I hate it when anyone says “scathing commentary”…it’s so overused that it has become very un-scathing sounding and cartoonish.
Blue, primarily known as a musician before now, has been working on the pieces for a year, but has been transitioning from music to art for nearly a decade. "Even with music, I had always come from a place of art theory and philosophy — I just wanted to have a rock and roll band be the medium."
For some reason I feel art theory works better with a fine art. Music is so tied to our emotions and precognitive emotions (early childhood and even prenatal experiences), theory is hard to define within our highly subjective and irrational response to it.
He may reside at the epicenter of his own subject matter, but Blue says he tried to take a detached approach to the work. "Here's the thing: I look at myself and everything about myself in a real sterile, anthropologically removed way," he said. "That I am from this world is of course a factor in the work, but I am able to really disassociate." (The goal being, we assume, some kind of well-informed impartiality.)
This is a gift to be able to detach from such an intense child-of-celebrity experience; but I would argue…also a safe-zone area from which to pontificate. What do we feel as artists being attached to our individual world? Before he committed suicide, I heard David Foster Wallace stand at a podium at the Hammer Museum, read a heart-wrenching short story and then declare, this master of the ironic movement, that irony is dead. He said we have run it out and we now yearn for sincerity and to feel. I think about this a lot. What do we have to say when we move back in from being removed. Maybe even a mash-up of distance and something revealing, I don't know…but it is essentially personal experience translated and communicated combined with theory that really gets the spot.
The show was dominated by three pieces: Ivory Tower, Lucky Jean Club, and Johnnie Kum L8 Lee. Ivory Tower, based on the Ivory Soap and Tower Records logos, is perhaps the most powerful, and personal, of the pieces. "Ivory Tower is a term I have paid close attention to my whole life, because it's about people who are isolated, breathing their rarefied air, people who don't have time to deal with the realities of the world — this is obviously a very common outcome of celebrity."
Critique of celebrity culture. You know I love this stuff.
Lucky Jean Club examines the "dynastic nature" of contemporary celebrity, lambasting the stars whose inherited fame is "undeserved and unqualified," while Johnnie Kum L8 Lee — featuring the Johnnie Walker and Lee jeans logos—is about the new generation of Insta-Stars, faces from the realm of reality TV perhaps, who rocket to fame despite having very little actual "art" to offer the world, "people who blow in from the hinterlands and overnight are made into these demigods — and it's like, 'What the hell is going on?'"
And it stands to be called out, two of these three aspects of celebrity criticism have been aimed at Cher. In the 1960s, she was accused of rocketing to fame without substance and has consistently been accused of having undeserved tabloidesque fame. And as an elder statesman of that fame, she has lived a somewhat secluded life. She has stood in front of an infinite amount of red-carpet sponsorship walls, unassumingly shilling for corporate brands from here back to surely Ivory Soap itself. Chaz and Elijah themselves could be accused of a dynastic celebrity.
Which brings up the point of using celebrities to make his art come alive on premier night. It simultaneously questions his very existence. Without his uber-celebrity mother there to be part of the exhibit, it may not have been seen, talked-about, produced or literally conceived (as she would never have met Elijah’s father to conceive of him outside of her life as a famous person meeting Gregg Allman at a Hollywood "event").
So he is a part of the wall. A thought I’m sure does not escape him.
That said, he is not in any way immune to the virus he is criticizing. "I watch Jersey Shore," he admits. "I love it. I watch it and I am corrupted, and I am the symptom. I am not above any of this — there is no escaping what we have become. I am just commenting on it."
It is good to hear him say that he is not above it. Which is an important quagmire facet of the whole entertainment industrial complex (hearing Maureen Orth talk about this subject is truly fascinating). I can relate to this…because it combines the emotional and intellectual response as one.
I myself do not watch Jersey Shore. I buy Cher records.
Non-Cher-child celebrities who were there: http://www.patrickmcmullan.com/site/event_detail.aspx?eid=32338&home=1
Chaz Bono and Jennifer Elia
Elijah Blue
Cher
Elijah's show in the context of other LA art openings last week:
http://coagula.com/2010/03/elijah-blue-jonathan-lasker-weekend-bender/
The "art" celebrity event of it all (coupled with the "real" celebrity event it turned out to be) kind of makes the paparazzi outside seem a bit staged. This isn't reality, after all. It's art.
First, an insane example of paparazzi molesting Chaz and Cher: http://x17online.com/celebrities/cher/cher_steps_out_with_her_son-02252010.php
Vulture-like photographers descend on them as they separately exit an art show on Melrose. It really shows the true claustrophobia of the situation.
Of course by watching this, you become part of the problem. The same photos can be seen on the Huffington Post. Sigh.
I've been a bit preoccupied with potential job loss, annoying battles with people here and there and other such things the past two weeks. On a slight bright note, I have been receiving some awesome Cher Zine 3 content that I am really excited about and I've started to write some poems for a new book. But it's been a stressful few weeks all around.
As I was driving to my job this morning, I listened to a Wilson Phillips CD my friend Christopher gave me as a gift for puppy sitting his two girls Zella and Kizzy. (He also gave me the awesome Nicole Atkins Neptune City album).
I do like Carnie and Wendy on TV (especially Carnie on Celebrity Ghost Stories, a show I absolutely adore) but I have never really liked the singing group Wilson Phillips. Their records always seemed passionless and vapid and their videos dull and mediocre. But I was willing to give their 2004 album of 60s and 70s covers a try. It was their first album in ten years and they covered not only their parents' material but Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Byrds, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.
Most of the album songs are solid misses. Flaccid remakes. Uninspired. Chynna does do a passable version of her parents' "Monday Monday" and the cover of "Go Your Own Way" is quite good, but I think that's more a testament to how freaking awesome the song itself is. However, the album liner notes by Mitchell Cohen made me do a double take.
We have gathered her to celebrate California. California music to be more exact…a myth that radio wrought, and everyone bought…
Blame Brian Wilson and John Phillips. While you're at it, blame P.F. Sloan and Jimmy Webb and Jan Berry and Jackie DeShannon and any number of Eagles and anyone who ever wrote a song that David Crosby sang harmony on. Not to mention McGuinn and McGuire and a few transplanted Canadians. They defined Southern California for anyone with a record player…
Getting Wilson Phillips to embrace this idea was one thing; getting everyone to agree on material was something else altogether. Right now you're looking at the track listing and asking, "Where are the Association and the Turtles and Love, the Merry-Go-Round and the Grass Roots and Johnny Rivers, Zevon and Newman and Nilsson? Where, for goodness sake, is Sonny Bono?
Wow! That is something. To initiate Sonny into this list of the major artists of the 70s and 60s who defined the California sound. You don't see that everyday. And it is really, really cool. And long over due. And part of a revisionist re-evaluation of Sonny & Cher's contribution to rock music. To not only include him in the list but single him out at the end…quite extraordinary.
It made me very glad this CD crossed my path.
Now that Cher Scholar has been married off, now that Christmas is over and the New Year has been kick-started, now that Mark McGuire has finally admitted to using steroids, we are free to move on with all lives, to start being productive citizens in the world, to start contributing great art and literature into the universe once more.
Yes, I'm talking about the third issue of the Cher Zine.
It's been too long.
But I'm ready to face it again. I just need your help.
The zine is looking for fan art, poems, fan fiction, DVD reviews, CD reviews and, most especially, concert reviews from the 1982 or earlier, 1960s and 70s shows particularly.
If you know anyone or you yourself have anything of this nature to contribute to the third compilation of all things thoughtfully Cher, please contact me or have your Cher pals contact me.
Another literary Cher monument is sure to be made.
For more information about the contents of the prior zines
