Many songwriters like Laura Marling, Stella Donnelly, Lucy Dacus and Mitski do it using their own names and drawing from their own lived experiences. and Leikeli47, but you don’t need sunglasses or a mask to play with persona. You see it in identity-obscuring artists like H.E.R. Today’s generation of women singer/songwriters have grown up with that history and are blending fact and fiction in new and interesting ways. Authenticity is mistaken as a synonym for autobiographical, and women have been told by critics, fans and their male colleagues they can only make autobiographical art. But conceptions of “confessional” and “authentic” songwriting have always had a gendered bias. Writing and performing songs about lived experience is important and worthy. Never will.”Ĭritical response demarcating real versus not has defined women’s work from the beginning, persisting still as both a compliment and a limitation. “To write about me is nothing like it is to be with me. “There’s nothing uncooked about me,” she wrote. At least, that’s how Del Rey felt, taking very public issue with Powers on Twitter. On its own, she says, Del Rey’s persona is derivative, but she’s compelling in how she re-enacts it.īy calling Del Rey a persona – lest we forget her birth name is Elizabeth Grant – Powers seemingly calls Del Rey’s songwriting authenticity into question. In her review of Del Rey’s latest album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, veteran music journalist Ann Powers deconstructs her presentation as the bad girl with bad circumstances. To some, her work is artifice to others, a sharp, honest reflection of modern life with authentically felt emotions. Ever since she debuted at the beginning of the decade she’s had her identity and worth repeatedly debated. The gloomy Southern California singer’s music and image are bound to the mythologies of old Hollywood, destructive love, doom and pop culture. In somewhat more predictable fashion, Tarantino pulled the revisionism card out again for his most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, rewriting the fate of murder victim Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) by having her would-be attackers get dispatched before they even met her - in hilariously brutal fashion no less.Lana Del Rey doesn’t believe she has a persona. Though some cried foul at Tarantino's historic revisionism, it was nothing if not a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek flipping of the bird to reality, where Hitler ultimately escaped anything close to true justice. The Basterds and Shosanna's (Mélanie Laurent) plan to burn down her cinema with the German High Command sealed inside is successfully pulled off, but because that's a little too subtle for Tarantino, he also has the Führer and Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) get machine-gunned to pieces by Ulmer (Omar Doom) and Donowitz (Eli Roth). opted instead to offer a window into the alternate history many wish actually happened. If most viewers assumed the film would end with the Basterds' plan to kill Hitler (Martin Wuttke) failing in spectacularly ultra-violent fashion, Q.T. While it was reasonable to assume that a Tarantino-directed World War II movie was never going to be strictly married to The Facts, even so, his homage to classic men-on-a-mission movies of yore made one extremely bold decision in its finale. This isn't to say that defying cinematic conventions is inherently a good thing - in fact, when done for its own sake it can often be quite terrible - but when talented filmmakers tinker with established movie rules in inspired ways, the results can be truly incredible.Īnd while many directors have fudged the facts either for the sake of a more entertaining story or to suit their own political agenda, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds tinkered with history for the sake our collective catharsis. While such efforts often end up falling flat, and a certain subset of audiences are always going to struggle with films that do something different, these ten films all flipped the script in frankly brilliant ways.įrom unexpectedly deviating from historical truth to ditching moldy genre tropes, killing off characters out of nowhere, and even denying the audience the violent catharsis they think they need, these films left audiences surprised and perhaps even a little bemused. Studies have proven time and time again that general audiences actually find genre formula comforting in its familiarity, and often reject films that dare to challenge the status quo.īut sufficiently creative and daring filmmakers have attempted to rip up the rulebook and subvert expectations of the type of movie they're making.
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