DREAMGIRLS (take 2)

it is the fuckin best

whenever i talk about this movie irl and people dismiss me i always want to be like "D4n P3rry loves it too!" but then i can't ;_;

How can people dismiss this movie? How? OK, I guess it's one of those films that reveals itself more and more on repeated watchings. The first time I was all like "glam! glitz! camp! pop! 45 single montages! tap dancing!" but the more times I watched it, the more of the subplots revealed themselves to me. On one level, it's like, yeah, it's a very superficial when dealing with the social changes of the 60s and 70s, but on the other, it's a fucking pop music fantasy! The fact that it tips nods to social change at all is amazing. Because that was what was *so great* about the girl group era songs in the first place, that they seemed quite frivolous and kitchen sink on the surface, but if you looked a little harder, you realised that they were grappling with some quite complex issues that just weren't getting talked about elsewhere. And this film has it all - solidarity, sisterhood, sexual betrayal, INAPPROPRIATE PREGNANCY - swapping out band members, sacking the fat talented one, bands getting screwed over by their managers, white fans being fickle, black fans having long memories but being unforgiving, all the cliches, but also laying bare a lot of things about the music industry that they try to pretend are in the past, or better yet never existed - even while they do the same thing today (white artists appropriating black music, quite literally in places, like, how much more blatantly can they put it out there?) This movie is fun, and silly, and light-hearted and glitzy, but there's a ton of condensed history in there with the sugar. Some of the film's most powerful moments are actually so understated like it's deliberately easy to miss them on first viewing - the bit where James Thunder Early is basically booed off the stage in Florida, for doing his usual salacious audience-baiting at a white woman, yet it's the moment that the black waiter turns around and gives him this *look* and a smile. Seems much more effective than a heavy handed "this is the moral message here" <- though there are those moments, too, e.g. "This is a black-owned business!" as Detroit burns.

A movie about Pop Music is always going to be a hard sell. Make it about GURL COOTIE female pop music, that's a harder sell, make it a film with three strong black female leads, and even if two of them are actual Pop Stars, that's going to be an impossible sell.

It's weird to me that it doesn't even seem to have a cult following among people who idolise the "Girl Group" sound; I've never seen anyone from the indie-pop scene even mention it. But I guess that's the thing, it's easy to listen to Supremes and Vandellas records and ignore race; it's not so easy to watch a film set in 60s America and ignore race.

(It just reminds me of those dudes who are always all "oh, Motown and 60s girl groups are so so classic" but if you turn up with an Electrik Red or Dawn Richard record they're all NOPE.)

Reading this thread, some of you (pl) are o_0 with your criticism of vocal styles.

One of the things that really got me was such a classic girl group trope of using vocal style as a shorthand for personality. Effie's singing style is indicative of her ballsy, creative-fire-of-the-band, over the top personality, and it's the bits where she breaks or lets down her tough-girl guard that really get you. And Deena's evolution from personality-free cipher to hugely emotive singer echoes her character development. And I think one of the underrated bits of the film is that moment where perpetual backing singer/doormat Lorelle finally goes from wispy bits of "oohs" and "aahs" to finally busting a gut on "Lorelle loves Jimmy, it's true... but Lorelle and Jimmy are THROUGH!!!!" -- aah, aaah, yeah, it's obvious (this is show tunes, of course it's obvious!) but it fucking gets me every time.

All of that is massively OTM

Edie Murphy drops trou.

― Abbott, Sunday, May 25, 2008 5:59 PM (5 years ago)