Polarising public and critical opinion is arguably something for a rock star to aspire to, but to be demonised more than adored is generally not seen as a successful result. This would seem to be the fate facing Courtney Love in 2004. She has been variously described as "a hapless circus act staggering down the red carpet" by Rolling Stone, "a Michael Jackson-esque media phenom, a culturally inevasive trainwreck who becomes increasingly creepy, depraved and plastic with each passing week" by Pitchfork Media, and "like a fucking inflatable sex doll, with slightly less singing and instrumental ability" by one of many typically erudite, anonymous internet pundits. The level of personal antipathy in these attacks is hard to miss. Nor, in many cases, is the misogyny.
When male music critics (both 'professional' and the aforementioned random online goons) write about Love, their prose often spasms with a kind of revolted body horror. The following elements, real or imagined, all contribute: the pills, the trackmarks, the promiscuity, the plastic surgery. The disgust engendered would all be well and good were it not for the number of double standards involved. Let's leave aside some of the internal inconsistencies - like calling someone shallow and obsessed with appearance while at the same time putting them down for not meeting your own standards of beauty - and focus on the big, glaringly obvious hypocrisies.
Taking too many drugs, courting controversy, engaging in erratic or even criminal behaviour, and being unrepentant about it: in the male rock star, these are the hallmarks of genius. In a woman, they are the symptoms of hysteria. The myth of the self-destructive male rock star shows no signs of abating, and we do not even have to consider the example most closely associated with Courtney Love. A recent issue of the NME was devoted to eulogising Sid Vicious, complete with the usually 'sexy' black and white photos of junkie Sid looking suitably skinny and fucked-up. I can't argue too much with a point of view that objects entirely to the idolisation of self-destruction and debasement in rock'n'roll - although it's not one I subscribe to entirely myself, and maybe that's because I'm just too weak, too suspectible to that kind of sordid glamour. The point is, for such a position to be coherent, not to mention less than virulently sexist, it cannot be delineated along the lines of gender, as is currently the case.
With typical insight into the workings of the music industry, Love herself has commented on this inequality (ironically enough, in a 2001 NME interview):
"You've got to be prepared for the names they are going to call you compared to your male peers... You will be a floozy and a slattern. He will be virile and a ladies' man. You will be a freakshow, a retching wretch, a sloppy drunk. He will be charismatic, vainglorious, a ferocious drunk and Dionysian. You will be indiscriminate and desperate. He will be generous, tortured and driven."
So it has played out in the music press. Courtney has been portrayed as a leech: adhering to a series of embodiments of male genius and siphoning off creative energy, credibility, publicity, even life force. She has also been accused of one of the worst crimes a woman can commit in a patriachal society: being a bad mother. And in each other of these cases, the issue of who her late husband was only heightens the severity of the crime. For example, while there are some who have never been comfortable with a woman singing about her sexual appetite, and those who find it even harder to stomach when the woman in question is 39, there are also those for whom the only acceptable course of action for Kurt Cobain's widow after his death would have been to a nunnery, go. No wonder these people hate Courtney now more than ever.
Of course, some of the negative response to Courtney Love's first album as a solo artist are motivated by musical concerns. The more accessible, soft-rock influenced sound that was hinted at in places on Hole's Celebrity Skin is predominant on America's Sweetheart (though it's not the whole story), and predictably the anti-pop brigade don't like it. She's also collaborated with the 'wrong' people (Bernie Taupin, Linda Perry), which means that those obsessed with punk rock credibility will never listen past this to hear the actual quality of songs like 'Uncool', 'Sunset Strip' or 'Mono'.
But America's Sweetheart is an astonishing album, one of those records it's hard to believe could be created by someone in the state it evokes (see also: Sticky Fingers, Nigga Please, etc.). It confronts Courtney Love's public image head-on: sometimes playfully, sometimes with such apparent seriousness that you can't help but wonder how much of it is 'real'. From today's rap superstars (who arguably learnt it from the punks in the first place), Love has learnt how to have her cake and eat it when it comes to blurring the line between reality and myth in her lyrics. When it comes to using artistic license to filter private dramas through a public image of which she is acutely self-aware, Love is up there with the likes of Eminem and Jay-Z. The end result is just as thrilling: a distillation of the artist's public persona which captures the things which are great about them, the things which aren't so great, and the things they've been castigated for by the media (including both the previous categories and also simple media fictions) - and this is then thrown back at the listener, taunting her critics. For this to work, it's necessary for the listener to think that the artist in question probably didn't commit exactly the crime they're describing, but might well be capable of it. On tracks like 'But Julian, I'm A Little Older Than You', 'I'll Do Anything' and 'Hello', she plays to perfection the part of the older, richer, badly-behaved woman: sexually voracious, with a weakness for beautiful boys and popping pills, and a tendency towards stalking and violence, one minute slashing the tires of seedy corrupt old rock gods and drowning them in their own swimming pools, the next minute emulating their decadence. In other words, just as much of a threatening anathema to Middle America (and repressed white rock fans worldwide who can't cope with the Other) as the figure of the gangsta rapper.
While there's no doubt that Courtney Love relishes a fight, her ongoing battle seems to be getting a little one-sided. In October 2003, Love was arrested for disorderly conduct and being under the influence of a controlled substance; she is currently fighting to regain custody of her eleven-year-old daughter, Frances Bean, and she faces a third-degree-assault charge from when she allegedly hit an audience member in the head with a microphone stand at a gig in New York in March. That's before you get onto the financial problems that have led to rumours that she is now technically homeless and living with music journalist Neil Strauss. In a recent interview with Strauss in Rolling Stone, Love claimed she needed to be "fucking saved": so whatever else she may be, she's hardly the masterfully scheming supervillainess some of her detractors imagine.
Which is why I'm calling on an immediate cessation of hostilities until further notice, or at least until the attacks on Love start to look a little less like witch-hunts. It's not impossible to conceive of criticisms of Courtney Love that are not misogynistic - in fact a strong critique on feminist grounds is hypothetically possible. If you find one, let me know. In the meantime, when it comes to the charge of boys' club chauvinism in the first degree, the haters should be considered guilty until proven innocent.
Buy your `Free Courtney' t-shirts here!
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