Ciara - Like A Boy

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

(crossposted from own lj)

Watch on YouTube

Ciara amazes me more and more with everything she does, this video is absolutely fantastic - she is pretty much the best dancer in all of pop right now, in that she's one of the few pop stars who approach dancing as an art, another way to express themselves. 'Like A Boy' is towering, of course, a song which works on so many levels: it's a song of empowerment, but the narrator is very much not empowered. She knows, rationally, what she should be doing, what payback she should be dealing out, but she's too in thrall to her emotions/her boyfriend to actually do it.

You can hear her frustration in her gasped vocals, Ciara again turning her vocal limitations into strengths: "What if I? Had a thing on the side? Made you cry?...If I played you like a toy? Sometimes I wish I could act like a boy..."...but of course she can't, she isn't, so she does the next best thing, which is to exhort all other women to take the road of suspicion and game-playing over weak emotion, to play rather than get played, following in the grandly amoral tradition of misandrist r&b ('Hit 'Em Up Style', 'Independent Women Part 2' and so on). The second verse is incredible, the narrator's frustration boiling over into a fierce call-and-response between herself and her chorus: "Girl, go 'head and be - just like him/Go run the streets - just like him/Come home late, say you asleep like him/Creep like him/Front with ya friends, act hard when you're with him like him/Keep a straight face when you tell a lie, always keep an airtight alibi/Keep him the dark - what he don't know won't break his heart".

(The "go run the streets" line actually reminds me of 'Suburbia' by the Pet Shop Boys, because they're essentially coming from the same emotional place, an overwhelming powerlessness and a need for liberation which isn't necessarily going to happen.)

The video doesn't acknowledge the frustration aspect as much, just like Beyonce never acknowledges that she's lying to herself in 'Irreplaceable', and why should it? Ciara is fierce and fabulous and strong in it, acting exactly like a boy without shame (cocking a snook at those "Ciara is a man" rumours too!), and the recurring scene where she's dressed as both boy and girl is awesome.

Comments

Explain to me

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Nice post, Lex. That said...

What is the significance of the "2007" at the beginning of the song/video? I may very well be wrong, but my sense is that it's a trope more or less exclusive to R&B/hip-hop. Maybe it's for personal diary purposes - imagine Ciara at 45, showing a collection of videos to her children, 'This was me when I was your age.' More likely its just the easiest way of signifying to the audience "New product!"

But in light of your write-up (and her next eight words), it's difficult to understand it in any other way than "Now, finally, after so many years..." Now, I am probably betraying my sex, age, and personal hangups), but my real question is When does the 'We are woman and we've had enough' theme finally lose its "revolutionary" power? If we're honest, there's nothing revolutionary about it; perhaps Ciara is young enough that these issues have just hit her viscerally, or perhaps she's speaking to (selling herself to) a younger audience, whose life experience is limited enough that it seems revolutionary.

To the extent that she's presenting the cheating and game-playing as revolutionary, then the cross dressing is as well. But, hey, I read As You Like It when I was 16, and most English-speakers can probably pick their own decades-old examples.

Instead of a narrator who is "very much not empowered," I hear another ode to the joys of boasting (it's difficult to take much narrative powerlessness away from those ominous strings, won't you admit?), and perpetuation of the myth that lying, cheating, and game-playing are the exclusive province of men. Yawn.

This reading is much stronger if I'm understanding the "2007" line correctly, I think, and so that *was* a real question, but either way I don't think it would change how I receive the song. (And nothing personal!)

Re: Explain to me

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The recurring theme of the album is all about Ciara growing up, so in a sense her youth, the fact that these experiences are to her visceral and new, is important (plus there's the tabloid angle re her split with Lil Bow Wow). I'm not sure she's presenting it as revolutionary though, more as another chapter in an age-old tale (even within r&b alone), and when you do that you have to stick to certain characterisations; if anything she's exhorting other women to do what she can't and break out of the trapped-by-emotion stereotype.

The 2007 intro isn't on the album version (neither is the amazing breakdown!); I read that as a) the usual hip-hop/r&b thing of emphasising how fresh and modern and New Product the song is, b) Ciara's own "it's 2007, I have grown up, I am 21 and no longer a silly girl who can be played" subtext.

Re: Explain to me

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Thr strings meanwhile I just hear as encapsulating the emotional drama of the narrative - she's in turmoil because she desperately wants to be able to do stuff her feelings won't let her, the strings heighten all of the tension, especially paired with those awesome slabs of electro bass.