After my Monday post to the blogosphere, “Mischievous Girls Make The World Go Round,” I talked to some people in the REAL WORLD about how Jack Odell’s mischievous daughter sparked him to create Matchbox cars. I talked about how a Mischievous Girl often provides the spark, the passion, the magic that ushers in real fun, real art, real magic to the day-to-day world around us. Somebody laughed and brought up the quote, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” from historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. That made someone else frown, and the frowning person brought up the fact that Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are mischievous but they’re making the kind of history nobody wants to see. That set me off on a monologue, the gist of which I’m turning into today’s post.
It must be hard, these days, to be a Mischievous Girl.
A hundred and fifty years ago in Europe, a Mischievous Girl who liked art—Victorine Meurent, Suzanne Valadon, so many others!—could hang out with guys like Édouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec or so many other energetic, talented guys from that sub-culture who were really contributing to the much larger pop culture around them.
Two generations ago in America a Mischievous Girl who liked music—Britney, Lindsay, Paris, so many others!—could hang out with guys like Jim Morrison, Jimmy Page, Todd Rundgren, Frank Zappa or so many other energetic, talented guys from that sub-culture who were really contributing to the much larger pop culture around them.
What these sub-cultures had in common is that individuals within them had an opportunity to contribute not just to the sub-culture, but also to the larger, encompassing culture. For the last two generations or so, it has been difficult to see if similar opportunities still exist for individuals.
Both pop culture at large and all its sub-cultures now are so defined by corporations that—typically—individuals only appear at all if they’re playing some corporate appointed, corporate anointed role.
I’m not sure any individual in any sub-culture can make significant contributions even to that sub-culture let alone the larger culture around us.
What place is there for the spark, the passion, the magic of a Mischievous Girl in a world not of individuals emergently shaping “the scene” around them, but a world defined, dominated and so very well defended by corporations, each with their own agenda?
Sharp-eyed folks saw this coming.
The writer Trevanian lamented the fate of the Mischievous Girl in the modern world twenty-five years ago in his novel “Shibumi,” seeing her as condemned “to mating with merchants and giving birth to advertising executives,” condemned “to a life of plans and possessions.”
In the last quarter century things have not gotten better.
It must be hard, these days, to be a Mischievous Girl.
* * * * * * *
I’ve touched on some of these topics before
(including one or two Mischievous Girls I’ve known)
during Marianne Faithfull week:
Get Well Soon, Marianne Faithfull! #1: A Groupie Metaphysics
Get Well Soon, Marianne Faithfull! #2: Groupie Totems, A Brief Introduction
Get Well Soon, Marianne Faithfull! #3: The Architecture Of The Groupie Landscape
Get Well Soon, Marianne Faithfull! #4: The Twenty-Six Muscles Of The Human Face
Get Well Soon, Marianne Faithfull! #5: The Monkee And The Fox
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