We’ve all heard the aphorism that says if you can’t
take the heat, you ought to get out of the kitchen, right? Well,
apparently all of us except for Fiona Apple. As much as I enjoy her
music, her rebellious attitude and incredible voice, I’ve had
a hard time listening to her music lately.
Why? Well, frankly, she’s just gotten obnoxious. I know
that as a good critic, I should be able to separate a person from
their artwork, but whenever I hear any of her songs come on the
radio, I start reaching for the station-changing knob. This
isn’t to imply that deep down there’s something wrong
with Fiona. For all I know, she’s probably a really sweet
person, kind to her friends, friendly to strangers and possessing
all kinds of other good qualities.
As a public figure, however, she leaves something to be desired.
Scan the papers and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Whenever she pops up in public, she’s always throwing a
tantrum of some sort. She continually complains that critics are
the bane of her existence, and that she should just be left to play
in peace. Now I only know this because I’ve read accounts of
this in other newspapers, so who knows, she may be right, and maybe
it is all a vast conspiracy by the evil media out to get her. I
doubt it, though.
It seems to me that she’s been the subject of a couple of
bad reviews, and now thinks that she’s somehow exempt from
criticism since she has a couple of hit songs. Hence, her
holier-than-thou attitude and acidic remarks to the media. Perhaps
she thinks that biting the hands that feed her will somehow advance
her career.
Well, we all know it doesn’t work that way. Try this in a
class if you’d like: If a professor gives you a bad grade,
then tell him that he’s a moron to his face, sit back and
wait for the good grades to start rolling in. Try it in all your
classes, actually. You’ll find yourself on the Dean’s
List in no time.
Now I’m being a little unfair to Fiona here, because
she’s by no means the only one who does it. I’m just
picking on her because she made a rather dramatic point at her
recent concert at the Wiltern that it would be a good show because
there were no reviewers in the audience. The irony was that she
made this remark with Robert Hilburn of the L.A. Times in
attendance, so her little covert remark was then sent out,
accompanied with a nice color photo, to subscribers all over the
county. A critic reporting on this bit of anti-critic sentiment
struck me as a moment of wonderful irony, so I had to mention
it.
Fiona’s not alone, though. Adam Sandler, a pseudo-musician
and largely unfunny comedian, does the same thing, but in a
different way. Rather than outwardly proclaiming his disdain for
the media, he’s simply withdrawn himself. He no longer does
press junkets for his films, nor does he grant interviews to the
media. People who work with him on his wildly successful films are
similarly forbidden from speaking to the press about the newly
minted recluse.
Once again, this is someone who’s been subject to a fair
amount of negative criticism in years past. Maybe since he’s
been panned so many times by cynical writers who had to sit through
his movies and listen to his attempts to break into music,
he’s decided to remove himself. For a better look at this,
read the March issue of GQ magazine ““ they do a better job of
analyzing Sandler’s self-imposed blackout than I ever
could.
I could continue this rant at some length to cover the extremely
long list of entertainment personalities who somehow consider
themselves above all attempts at criticism. That’s a little
self-indulgent, though. Just as it’s my right as a writer to
dislike them, it’s their right as artists not to respect what
I have to say. Rather than keep bagging on the people who
can’t take comments on their work, however, I’m going
to extend this dragnet of mine to all those celebrities who keep
proclaiming how much they hate being famous.
Ok, first off, this is just straight-up dumb. I’m sorry,
but there’s no other way to say it. If you’re going to
be a professional musician, one who records albums, goes on tour
and appears on MTV, then you’ve already given up your right
to obscurity. I’m not saying that you’ve got to expect
paparazzi creeping around your bushes or crazed teenage fans
breaking into your house. Once you get that record deal, however,
you can’t use that tired old line, “I just want to make
music.”
If these people really wanted to just make music, then
they’d go get another job and make music a hobby. It would be
like Bill Clinton saying that he just wants to make policies, not
have people analyze his life. As all of us who’ve taken
Communications 101 know, if you actively seek the limelight,
you’ve got to be ready to accept the consequences. So when
the boy band of the moment gets mobbed at a restaurant, it’s
tough luck for them. It would be nice if fans would be respectful
and all, but the artist has to accept the downside of fame.
Let’s use everyone’s favorite celebrity Courtney
Love as an example here. She’s been crammed down our throats
for quite awhile now, first as the wife of Kurt Cobain, then as a
trashy musician, then as a glamourous actor.
Throughout the entire process, she’s been a royal pain,
continually whining about the how unfairly she’s been
treated. In her defense, she has really had it tough in many ways
““ having your husband kill himself is a terrible experience
whether the whole world knows about it or not ““ but
nonetheless, she just generally runs off at the mouth far too much
for her own good. I saw her in concert a few years back, where she
went out of her way to tell the entire audience how much she
loathed the photographers who were there covering the show, going
so far as to order them to leave and intentionally standing away
from them.
Well Courtney, tough cookies. You didn’t seem to have a
problem when everyone was all excited about your high-fashion
makeover, so don’t get huffy just because someone takes an
unflattering shot of you onstage. The same goes for you, Fiona.
When people called your debut album “brilliant,” you
didn’t pitch a hissy fit. When things aren’t looking so
sunny, though, you don’t have the right to suddenly opt out
of the media eye.
It’s one thing to want to keep your personal life private.
I don’t have any problems at all with public figures who want
to keep their relationships to themselves, or those who don’t
want non-essential details put out there for all the world to see.
When it comes to their roles as entertainers, though, they’ve
got to learn that they’re not just regular old people
anymore. I don’t think they’d want to be, either,
though. Would Courtney want to go back to being just a regular lady
with a bad job and a band that she played in on weekends?
I doubt it.
So in my parting words of infinite wisdom, I’ll remind all
those celebrities (since I’m sure they all hungrily await my
genius advice) that they got to where they are because of the
public. The reporters who reviewed your work and the people who
bought it are the ones to whom you owe your fame to. Don’t
think you’re somehow above us all now, just because you got
famous, and we didn’t. So, cool it with the snootiness, and
just go back to making music. That’s why we like you.