Ciara - Like A Boy
Feb. 22nd, 2007 05:52 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
alexmacpherson.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
poptimists(crossposted from own lj)
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.
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.
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Date: 2007-02-23 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-23 08:25 pm (UTC)I love the way Ciara's dancing...is kind of totally free-flowing AND rigid and jerky at the same time; very controlled AND very lost-in-music too; crunk AND poised. I love her use of props in the scenes with male-Ciara and female-Ciara, and the theatrical, stagey interplay between the two of them, always ending up in these posed setpieces (her stiletto on his shoulder; his hat on her head); and male-Ciara's Jacko moves are tremendously impressive.
I love the way she takes on all these masculine signifiers - crotch-grabbing, muscle-flexing, screwface - without abandoning her own signature smoothness; and the incredible breakdown (so GEOMETRIC), and the heartbeat thrusts when the song pauses, and the way she is always as one with the beat.
also note - Missy Elliott ft Ciara - Lose Control (http://youtube.com/watch?v=7nTStE13Mm0), where she's not the star but abandons herself entirely to Missy's mentalism; Ciara ft Chamillionaire - Get Up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjqd26ESeUg), where every one of her actions from pulling on the black glove to bouncing around in a whirl of energy during the breakdown is completely captivating (another thing about Ciara - she never stops, she's always doing something which keeps your eyes on her), and maybe my favourite, Ciara - Promise (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bkEijRNI1dw), which I will be shocked if you don't like (it is a BALLAD! with a DANCING VIDEO! it is ascetic and wild).