It took me awhile to open up to this latest round of pop music, celebrity “feminists.” Yes, I put the feminist in quotes, not only because my take on their feminism is tenuous at best, tentative at worse, but also because the most dominant ones in 2024 – think, brat era feminists – are all white women.
Killjoy Equation: White Feminism = Blanking
It’s not that female artists of color were not there – Beyoncé, SZA, H.E.R, Megan Thee Stallion indeed were – they were just “not acknowledged or recorded as being there” (p. 246). I'm looking at you, specifically, CMA's.
The white female artists who get the discourse as being “feminist artists” are often tentative around their feminism, tiptoeing around the f-word or being otherwise wishy washy around their politics.
That’s not so much a read, but more a position I can’t judge them for given what happens when women, and other typically marginalized folks (the queer folks, the folks of color, etc…) step into their (political) power and express/exert positions that run counter to dominant systems.
When someone like Chappell Roan claims personal space and safety and refuses to let you touch her or otherwise lay claim to her everyday existence she is told to shut up – sing and perform; which sounds an awful lot like the “shut up and play football” critiques launched at Colin Kaepernick when he could no longer remain silent around race based violence and police brutality.
Killjoy Truth: What you are told you need to do to progress farther or faster in a system reproduces the system.
Killjoy Truth: If happiness requires turning away from violence, happiness is violence.
With Roan, her rise to stardom and celebrity – how hard she has worked for it and pursued it – has led to some to express versions of “she wanted it,” and “what did she expect?” – cue the soundtrack of rape apologists. To this Roan says:
“I’m allowed to say no to creepy behavior, okay?”
The patriarchal social order responds with a resounding, NO.
Killjoy Truth: The more we challenge structures, the more we come up against them.
Enter, Kesha, the been-there-done-that won’t take no patriarchal shit music industry avenger. If we thought that Taylor Swift re-releasing her “Taylor’s Version” of her first six albums to screw Scooter Braun out of profits around her original masters was a baller move, Kesha’s having a “hold my beer” moment.
“The music industry should be fucking terrified of me,” Kesha says in an interview with Elle Magazine. “Because I’m about to make some major moves and shift this shit. I really want to dismantle it piece by piece and shine light into every corner. I hope my legacy is making sure it never happens to anybody ever again.”
She’s now committed to providing support to younger artists like Chappell Roan, and Reneé Rapp, and to building a new digital platform that will prioritize artist’s physical safety and mental wellbeing.
Kesha was just 18 years old in 2005 when she signed a six-album deal with songwriter and music producer Lukasz Gottwald (Dr. Luke). Less than ten years later, Kesha was exploding the music industry with a civil suit against Dr. Luke for infliction of emotional distress, sexual harassment, and assault.
It would take Kesha 19 years (more years than she was alive when she signed with Dr. Luke) to fulfill her contractual obligations and reclaim the legal rights to her own voice. In 2024, Kesha started living like a free woman – a free woman with power and a pull towards justice.
Not wasting any time, Kesha, whose name means “innocent joy” in Russian, released the aptly titled “Joyride,” to express where she is at:
“there’s only so much somebody can take before just feeling wrecked....My soul needs this album. I need to reclaim my joy. Because I fought so fucking long and hard for it.”
Joy is a recurring theme for Kesha, and in reclaiming her own joy, she is killing the joy of others – those who benefit from the marginalization and oppression of patriarchy and who work to maintain it. Kesha has survived, and as “survival can be a protest” so too can joy – the ultimate f-you to patriarchy.
Like a feminist killjoy cultural critic, Kesha provides a new definition of what happiness is – being free from the oppressive control of the patriarchal music industry – that can be mapped across broader sociocultural political systems. Now it is time for the rest of us to join her and get in, for the KILLjoyride.
Sources:
Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed, 2017.
The Feminist Killjoy Handbook, Sara Ahmed, 2023.
"Kesha Freed Herself, Now She's Saving Music," https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a62470735/kesha-new-album-interview-2024/
Comments