I used my teenage diaries as an archival source for this essay I wrote on the legacy of @julianahatfield's Hey Babe http://t.co/oLeP8ZBLg3
— Laura Fisher (@termitetree) July 1, 2013
Laura Fisher:
Hey Babe’s landscape of feelings — self-disgust, second-guessing, depression, cautious optimism — have no place in a reception model that hinged strictly on “empowerment.” If Hey Babe’s tone of general malcontent has endeared the album to alienated listeners over the past 21 years, it has also kept the album from wider recognition. This reflects our cultural preference for “vehement passions” over “minor feelings.” As theorist Sianne Ngai notes of the Western literary tradition, “something about the cultural canon itself seems to prefer higher passions and emotions — as if minor or ugly feelings were not only incapable of producing ‘major’ works, but somehow disabled the works they do drive from acquiring canonical distinction.” This explains a lot about Hatfield’s disappearance from the alternative rock narrative.
An outstanding article. Read the whole thing at The New Inquiry.