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January 10, 2007
Dreamgirls
Things to discuss about the 2006 film Dreamgirls:
1. The return of Jaleel White to the world of entertainment.
2. They make a film about Motown and don't make a character based on Rockwell? I guess he will be the focus of Dreamgirls II.
3. Overall, the movie is the latest to fall into the trap of carobism. I first used this concept in reference to Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girls: if you love chocolate (real girls in Harajuku), why surround yourself with fake Harajuku girls (carob)? One media work making a tribute to another media work in the same area is always in danger of being irrelevant from the start.
Dreamgirls is irrelevant from the start: let's make a big tribute to some of the world's greatest pop songs by writing vastly inferior Broadway musical rip-offs of the originals. Les Miserables is such an easier mission since the Hugo novel did not come with sheet music and you could pretty much go nuts with the idea of bread-stealing and revolution. Grease and Little Shop of Horrors did a bang-up job of pastiche - essentially writing new 50s pop songs within the extremely-limited formulas of the era.
DG - at least in this cinematic incarnation - seems reluctant to go into deep pastiche and instead relies on a long run of very New York composery show-tunes and torch songs crammed into slightly-modified versions of modern R&B. After seeing DG down in Miami, I jumped into the car and cranked up 102.7 oldies radio to immediately win some real Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson. Real Motown, first of all, is super tambourine heavy - which does not really match the production styles of American Idol dreck-pop. But most importantly, the melodies and rhythms of the early crossover Motown songs are masterfully simple. The beauty lies in the enormous melodies laid over accessible chord and beat structures. The DG musical composers cannot resist the sophisticated allure of Dmaj9-type over-complex jazz piano arrangements, and subsequently, couldn't write a AM radio pop song to save their lives. The film only makes the Hair team look even more genius: "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", "Where Do I Go?", "Easy to Be Hard", and "Good Morning Starshine" not only work within their musical theatre context, they were all successfully covered by pop artists.
(There is also the irony that the film implicitly and explicitly acknowledges the importance of having African-American songwriters behind African-American performers, and yet all the songs in the musical are written by a white musical guy.)
As a historical meta-pop fan, I was generally disappointed that the musical production and mixing of the Dreamgirls material did not accurately reflect the old technological limits of their era. This seems to be asking for way too much, except that all the visual design in the film was very faithful to the original material. All the fictional "The Dreams" album covers look like old Motown record covers thanks to nice font matching and some blatant borrowings. Maybe there is no danger in recreating past visual styles when they are merely background props in the narrative, but the songs are unfortunately bound to be products that must sell in the contemporary music market. There is always going to be some unintentional coloring of the material with modern norms (check out the over-funked basslines in the 1979 film version ofHair), but Dreamgirls doesn't even seem like it's trying.
I can't help but think that the narrative would have been much more successful had they gone that extra mile in the music tech department and used all possible tools to aurally date the songs in their respective eras. If that means tambourine and Mariah Carey doesn't use tambourine, so be it. If this means mono in a stereo world, go for it.
This is Spinal Tap is a exemplar of this principle in action. "Gimme Some Money" is annoying early Beatles R&B in B&W, while "Listen to the Flower People" has the dippy lyrics, the indulgent sitar solo, and the fey harmony vocals of the Autumn of Love. The joke is ambiguous: either they are making general fun of the ridiculous changes in musical conventions over history or they are poking fun at Tap's mindless transformations into the norms of each particular social moment. But regardless, it works because we can perfectly date the fictional song's historical era solely from the production elements. Dreamgirls, on the other hand, fails to smell the glove.
Update: Since the whole point of this blog game is to invent annoying words and concepts to describe contemporary social phenomena, looky here: today's Gawker contains the line "It's like if someone preferred carob to actual chocolate." Carobism spreads, my friends.
I don't actually think they got that from me, but strange synergy on using carob as a metaphor for preferring the inauthentic. Maybe I wasn't the only five year-old traumatized by a mother going through a health food boom in the early 80s. I never really looked forward to eating the carob-covered raisins in my lunchbox meant as a "dessert," but I can finally cash in on the reference.
Posted by marxy at January 10, 2007 5:38 PM
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Comments
1. The Zoobombs version of "Gimme Some Money" is quite excellent.
2. My dad used to rock climb, so when we saw Cliffhanger, he kept talking about how unrealistic it was because of how they broke climbing rules.
3. Is Marxy my real father? Are the Zoobombs really relevant to this conversation?
I'll leave it at that.
Posted by: Carl at January 10, 2007 7:37 PM
Recently I rewatched the early eighties TV series of Brideshead Revisited, and was really struck how everyone in it looked just like the New Romantic boys I used to see around London clubs at that time. And it made me realise that period movies always end up looking more like the period they were filmed in than the era they're supposed to portray (even if we need some temporal distance to realise this). I can't offhand think of an exception to this cast-iron rule. And given that it's a cast-iron rule, it seems somehow quixotic of you to criticise this film (which admittedly I haven't seen) of not trying hard enough to be authentic. As you noted, we already have the authentic - at any time you can tune into an oldies station and get the real mccoy. Surely period movies are not in the end about trying to mimic the authentic original, but about trying to transform it into some sort of fantasy parallel world, more to do with today than yesterday?
Posted by: Mitsuko at January 10, 2007 9:04 PM
Yeah, but with the visuals they work pretty hard to get it right. I was struck by how narrow the lapels were on the early 60s jackets. But with the music production, they let the snare sound like 2006 snares.
Posted by: marxy at January 10, 2007 9:34 PM
Marxy, when are you going to review Rocky VI?
Posted by: dzima at January 10, 2007 10:40 PM
The old timey music in Oh Brother Where Art Though is also a pretty good example of recreating the old fashioned sound.
Posted by: Mutantfrog at January 11, 2007 12:37 AM
It is difficult not to compare DreamGirls with The Temptations miniseries. It pales in comparison - even with all the liberties taken. Lady Sings The Blues is another great reference point. I am pretty certain that what ruined this movie was star saturation (yes, adapting a musical for the big screen is no mean feat, but still...)
Posted by: Chuckles at January 11, 2007 1:00 AM
Posted by: Momus at January 11, 2007 4:11 AM
I think calling my position Rockism is a cop-out because I think being the accuracy here isn't about adhering to a certain set of codes JUST BECAUSE, but that it works better in terms of narrative technique for this movie to make the songs sound like their respective eras. Is the suit design "rockist" for making the labels narrow instead of incredibly wide? No, that's just how they show the transition from 60s to 70s in a visual context.
Posted by: marxy at January 11, 2007 6:47 AM
Posted by: Rory P. Wavekrest at January 11, 2007 9:59 AM
I am assuming that Momus is also a reference on the RockyVIism page.
Also, Rory - can you send me some 70s Galt MacDermot?
Posted by: marxy at January 11, 2007 10:22 AM
affirmative.
And would someone who actually edits or writes on wikipedia go ahead and create that page for RockyVIism? Which is, of course, the tendency to view all previous Rocky films as inferior to good ole number six.
Posted by: Rory P. Wavekrest at January 11, 2007 2:07 PM
"Is the suit design "rockist" for making the labels narrow instead of incredibly wide? No, that's just how they show the transition from 60s to 70s in a visual context."
Now please apply this argument to Densha Otoko being "based on a true story".
Posted by: Momus at January 11, 2007 9:35 PM
I find it odd that you still think the "true story" aspect of Densha Otoko was the marketing plan tacked on after the fact instead of the fundamental reason the whole thing was a "phenomena" in the first place and people cared. They only cared at the 2-ch level, because they thought they were actually witnessing something real.
Dreamgirls is a musical film - I'm not saying it's unethical in its fictional elements. I'm just saying that being accurate in the musical production and technological detail of mixing would have helped the narrative.
I wouldn't give the Densha Otoko people too much credit in making the authentic/inauthentic decision one of craft - they are just trying to sell a hoax and will protect the idea that this REALLY HAPPENED to the grave. We don't even get a knowing wink.
Posted by: marxy at January 11, 2007 10:17 PM
Let's pretend we were talking about the Beach Boys song "Kokomo." I think it would go a little like this...
Marxy - They should have named the place something that sounds more like an actual tropical island, instead of an actual city in Indiana.
Momus - http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/WhateverYouAreSayingItsWrongAndVisitMyBLog
Marxy - What?
Momus - See it doesn't matter that Kokomo isn't a real place. That's part of the art, like faith healing or blacked-out CIA documents.
Marxy - Was that what I was saying?
Posted by: marxy at January 11, 2007 10:24 PM
Comment on "Proof" (I was not able to post it on that webpage)
Though almost a year behind your notice, I found that the Japanese title of that movie (Hoyaku) is better than the original one.
I saw the movie a few days ago and have updated about it on my blog.(written in Japanese)
Thanks to this movie, I was able to find "Neomarxisme" today. I've just glanced at some but your articles and comments are very interesting!! Would like to give a pure Japanese point of view time to time, if possible.
Posted by: yoko at January 12, 2007 12:09 AM
no Dmaj9, but how about a Dm7 flat 5th?
(taken from harlan thompson's transcription, available wherever fine guitar tabs are archived):
Gm Eb9
You persuaded me to love you and I did
Db
But instead of tenderness I found heartache instead
E Ab/Eb Fm
Into your arms I fell, so unaware
Fm7/Eb Dm7-5 Db6 Eb
Of the loneliness that was waiting there
...simply pointing out that the most beautiful and memorable moments in Motown songs tend to be more harmonically complex than i think you're letting on.
that said, Dreamgirls appears to be simply another example of the music business desperately cannibalizing its own brittle, rancid, decaying body, veiled in a thick cloud of denial and nostalgia... or have i just been spending too much time with the Lefsetz Letter?
Posted by: nick stone at March 2, 2007 5:31 PM