Artistic License and Singing the Showpieces

I know, I know. Iowa caucuses. New Hampshire primaries. Gotta write something about the current GOP horserace. Actually, I don’t. I might later, but not now. Today’s topic: songs. Specifically, what can and cannot legitimately (i.e., ethically, as opposed to legally) be done to them? Stated otherwise: what is “artistic license”?

Two recent cases raise this topic. The first one to come to my attention, although not the first in terms of when it actually happened, was Cee Lo Green’s rendition of John Lennon’s signature song, “Imagine,” in the waning minutes of 2011. Green, completely unknown to most of the country and known to most of the rest for a single song in which he oh-so-cleverly utters the phrase “Fuck you” a couple dozen times (to be fair, the tune is actually OK), decided he’d improve on what Rolling Stone declared the #3 greatest song of all time, behind only “Satisfaction” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” Yeah, that’s smart.

OK. There are two things awful about this version. One of these things, the fact that it’s crooned with all the integrity and honest emotion generated by the lounge singer at the DewDrop Inn, falls under the heading of “artistic license.” I literally left the room, it was so bad. But the fact that I didn’t like it (i.e., it wasn’t to my taste) doesn’t make it censurable: it means only that I’m less likely to buy any of the man’s recordings in the future. (But how likely was that, anyway?) My departure, however, meant that I therefore missed (live) the far more serious transgression: changing the lyrics, then tweeting a half-hearted pseudo-apology (very well disguised as defensive self-justification), then cravenly taking the thread down.

Lennon’s song, which he himself described as a sort of “Communist Manifesto” posits religion as one of the central causes of the world’s problems. His utopia, then, is one in which there is “nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too.” Green changes that idea to its polar opposite: “… and all religion is true.” Seriously, is it possible to get any further away from Lennon’s intent?

Put it another way. What if an atheist decided to change the words to a well-known Christmas carol? “This, this is Christ the guy, whom shepherds guard while eagles fly.” Catchy, huh? Can you imagine the uproar?

Green, whether aware of having just made a colossal fool of himself in front of a bigger audience than he’ll ever see again without buying a ticket or perhaps, as the Huffington Post suggests, “to preempt criticism,” proceeded to tweet, “Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that's all.”

This would make you about the stupidest person on the planet, then, wouldn’t it, Cee Lo? You’re in New York, you freaking moron. Anything bad happen in New York in the name of religion about a decade or so ago? Anyone?

The fact that Green is quite possibly too stupid to understand that his form of fuzzy-headed and ontologically impossible inclusiveness runs contrary to the original intent does not excuse his actions. Why? Because surely even third-rate crooners can understand that one of two things must be true if you change the lyrics to a song: either you change its meaning, or you needn’t have bothered.

Green took a lot of heat from both atheists and Lennon fans for his transgressions. Here’s @maleficat: “fuck you, @CeeLoGreen. sing it right or don’t sing it at all.” Others—a lot of others, apparently—articulated similar sentiments. The other tack was to point out that wearing a full-length fur coat and a cornucopia of bling might not exactly comport with the song’s wistful longing for a world with “no possessions.”

Needless to say, Green was being (rightly) pilloried. The best any of his defenders could muster was that a). it’s artistic license [Bullshit.] and b). the response considerably outweighed the offense [Quite possibly true.]. So he did what any pusillanimous flavor-of-the-month pseudo-celebrity would do: he pulled his Twitter thread and sulked.

Tempest in a teapot? Maybe. It was just one line (“no hell below us; above us, only sky” remained untouched), and perhaps his (initial) motives if not his actions were good. But there’s something paradigmatic at work here. In a week in which an Eric Cantor minion can interrupt an interview to make the preposterous claim that Ronald Reagan never raised taxes, we are drawing ever nearer to a “We have always been at war with Eastasia” moment. Anything we can do to pull back from that precipice is a good thing. And we must recognize that what Green did, whether we like his sentiments better than Lennon’s or not, was to radically and completely volitionally change the intent of a piece of literature that happens to be in the form of a song lyric and present it as if it were the original. Parody? Fine. But this falls more into the realm of the counterfeit than the satiric.

That someone other than a politician could be that stupid and/or arrogant is troubling. But then, Green really is dumber than the proverbial sack of hammers. How do we know? He messed with John. And not with some B-side, either: with the song Rolling Stone describes as “an enduring hymn of solace and promise that has carried us through extreme grief, from the shock of Lennon's own death in 1980 to the unspeakable horror of September 11th.” You don’t do that. It’s like criticizing Reagan at a Republican debate. The political reality is that Green might have gotten away with blithely screwing around with the lyrics of an old Guess Who song or something by Genesis or somebody. But you do not mess with John. You. Just. Don’t.

Far easier to parse, except for the troubling spectre of trying to wrap one’s head around what goes on in some people’s minds, is the news from Indiana that an idiot state legislator (there I go with the redundancies again, sorry) has decided that the state has so few problems, especially as relate to education, that the highest priority she can imagine is to force public schools and state universities, plus any private school receiving any state or local scholarship funds (including vouchers) to enforce standards for singing the national anthem at public events.

One Vaneta Becker, a Republican (but you knew that), heard last spring from a constituent who was “upset about a school program in which the words of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ were substituted or parodied in a way the caller found disrespectful. The senator said she herself had heard parody versions of the national anthem on television programs.” (N.B., the latter wouldn’t, of course, be covered by Becker’s bill.)

The bill would force schools and musicians to sign a contract to meet “appropriate standards,” whatever the hell that means. Musicians—amateur or professional—could be fined $25 (a huge hardship for the likes of Roseanne Barr, Jimi Hendrix, or Marvin Gaye) for violating those standards, which would be enforced by a panel of judges including a has-been pop star and a bitchy guy with a foreign accent. OK, I made that last part up. It would be “the State Department of Education, with input from the Commission for Higher Education” who would be Lord High Executioners for such matters.

This bill is, of course, transcendently stupid in just about every way imaginable: apart from probably being unconstitutional, it is unenforceable; it is silly; it requires judgment calls by people utterly unqualified to make them; it steers us all just a little closer to creeping Big Brotherism. Jack Marshall makes these points in a little more depth in an excellent piece on Ethics Alarms; I needn’t repeat them.

But let me talk about two things he doesn’t. First, the real progenitor of this bill may not have been that phone call from a constituent at all. Not when there’s this story from January of last year. Sixteen-year-old Shai Warfield-Cross was told by her school that she needed to perform the anthem “in a traditional way” after someone associated with another school altogether complained that—get this—her performance before a basketball game rendered the tune unrecognizable (it wasn’t) and it was “disrespectful to current and former members of the military” (WTF???).

Principal Jeff Henderson, who’d have been a contender for last year’s Curmie if I’d seen this story earlier, promptly capitulated. Whether the racial overtones read into the situation by Warfield-Cross’s family are legitimate, I can’t say: racism isn’t the only form of stupid. But, completely apart from the inanity of deciding that there’s a “traditional” way to perform the tune of an old drinking song, the suggestion that Warfield-Cross’s performance is anything but mainstream and respectful is itself ludicrous. (For what it’s worth, after the administration’s craven and silly decision went viral, they did apologize: better late than never.)

Secondly, this legislation is proposed by a Republican. This makes sense in terms of the hollow pseudo-patriotism. But this proposal runs directly counter to the presumed ideological center of GOP: small government. Not only does it provide one more way in which the government interferes in the lives of private citizens, it also creates yet another layer of bureaucracy: schools are required to tape every performance and keep the evidence for two years!

Becker sniffed that “I don't think it would be very difficult for schools. You could record it on a lot of cellphones or like a small recording device (or) a CD.” Well, yeah, in terms of technology. But somebody has got to record it and store it, somebody has got to figure out written standards… the list goes on. More to the point, it’s just another stupid, useless requirement that distracts from the real work of educators.

And if you think that filling out silly forms and reports doesn’t ultimately add up to a mountain of triviata, let me introduce you to my wife, the community college financial aid director. (Be it noted, a fair amount of the time-wasting paperwork she’s got to do is the result of silliness by Democrats.)

The more perspicacious readers will notice that I’m allowing more leeway in music than in lyrics. Maybe that’s because I’m a whole lot better writer than a singer (this is where, Gentle Reader, you snort that if this is the way I write, you really don’t want to hear me sing). It has a little more to do with the nature of the two arts: music is written to be performed: that is, it is, by definition, mediated between writer and audience. Literature doesn’t work that way. Yes, song lyrics are intended to be performed, too, but I think they’re in a different category.

Even more importantly, there’s no such thing as the polar opposite of a musical arrangement. There is of an idea expressed verbally. Or at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

The Outrage That Wasn't... But Was.

The horrible collapse of the stage at the Indiana State Fair last week generated more than enough grief for more than enough people. Dozens were injured, and there were five fatalities. The thought that the fates would have determined that one woman’s suffering still wasn’t enough captured the imagination: the generally reliable Bil Browning posted on the Bilerico.com site that Indiana authorities refused to release the body of victim Christina Santiago (pictured) to her legal-in-Illinois-but-not-in-Indiana domestic partner Alisha Brennon, who was herself seriously injured in the accident. [N.B., one site lists Ms. Brennon as Ms. Santiago’s “fiancée.”]

Browning got the story wrong. To his credit, he pulled it as soon as it became clear that such even might be the case, and he issued what I read as a comprehensive and sincere apology when the facts became clearer, but the story had already gone viral, e.g., a post by Dan Savage which includes this little mini-rant:

This is what DOMA is designed to do. DOMA does nothing to strengthen traditional marriages. It doesn't prevent straight couples from divorcing or make straight couples any more likely to take responsibility for their children. The federal DOMA and all the mini-DOMAs enacted by the states only serve to torment and persecute gay people at the most trying moments of their lives: when a partner is ill, when a child is sick, when a partner dies. And people who claim to be Christians will howl the loudest if DOMA is repealed.

Savage, too, corrected the record after it became clear that Ms. Brennon, still hospitalized, was not being denied access to her partner’s remains.

The story quickly shifted to trying to figure out how the mistake happened: Browning tells the tale from his perspective, while a commenter on a post on the Facebook page of Amigas Latinas, an organization for Hispanic LGBTQ women, for which Ms. Santiago was director of programming, feared that she (the commenter) had inadvertently spawned the false report:

In a Spanish-language interview yesterday I was asked how Amigas was/had responded, and I said one of our immediate concerns-bc this happened in Indiana- was to make sure that AB's wishes would be respected and to be a support or advocate if they weren't. Worried that my Spanish language skills - kind of at 80%- made it sound like this WAS happening (instead of HAD BEEN an initial concern/question).

Luckily, however, whatever the reason for the false report, it was, indeed, a false report, and Ms. Santiago’s remains will be venerated and disposed of in accordance with Ms. Brennon’s wishes.

So all is well, right? Not really.

All we need to do is to read the article on the WILL site to see that there’s a potentially very dark cloud surrounding this silver lining:

“The wife (Brennon) never contacted us to claim the body so she was never denied that opportunity,” said Alfarea Ballew, chief deputy coroner of the Marion County Coroner’s Office. “The wife is still hospitalized. We’re working with the friends and aunt (of Santiago) to release the body. I’ve never talked to anybody denying the wife that opportunity.”

In an interview with Chicago Public Media on Tuesday afternoon, Ballew said the office has never encountered a situation involving the spouse claiming a body of a same-sex loved one.

“Still,” Ballew said, “I’m surprised it’s being put out that way. That’s not how we would address that kind of issue. We release the body to the next of kin. Christina’s aunt was listed as the next of kin. The aunt signed off on paperwork and everything is moving forward with the wife.”

Notice in particular that matter-of-fact, slightly puzzled, tone in the last paragraph. Translation: Ms. Brennon will be involved in the disposition of Ms. Santiago’s remains because, and only because, Ms. Santiago’s aunt—the next of kin—allows her to be. And what if there had been no aunt? Or if the aunt had refused to honor the wishes of Ms. Brennon?

Ultimately, it matters little what the precise details were of the relationship between the two women, or of the ultimate resolution of the perhaps manufactured mini-crisis of how and to whom Ms. Santiago’s body should be released. The point is this: the two lesbian women could have been married per se according to the laws of several states, and Indiana would still have released the remains only to the aunt as “next of kin.” Luckily, the aunt is a mensch, but such is not always the case. I personally witnessed a dear friend be denied the opportunity even to attend the “private family funeral” of his partner of over a quarter century. (The family did graciously allow him to pay his partner’s medical bills, however. Seriously, I would cheerfully strangle these bastards with their own intestines, which I would obtain by reaching down their throats.)

And so we’re back to Savage’s twin observations: on the one hand, “it didn’t happen this time”; on the other, this is indeed precisely what DOMA was intended to do. That Indiana didn’t turn down a partner’s request for her loved one’s remains may be true, but it is true only because they weren’t asked. The coroner is indignant because someone alleges that she “[denied] the opportunity” to Ms. Santiago’s wife. She didn’t. She would have, had she been asked, but that’s a different matter, of course.

This case has a happy ending, to the extent that any story about a life cut short far too early can do so, in that we can safely presume that Ms. Santiago’s friends and loved ones will have an appropriate outlet through which to celebrate her life and mourn her death. But we’re also reminded that such a result was precipitated not by laws, codes of ethical conduct, or a culture of respect and dignity. Rather, it stemmed from the grace of a single woman, who could just as easily—legally and quite possibly (from her perspective, at least) ethically—have decided otherwise.

The adage that no one is free until we all are may be trite. It’s also as resonant today as ever.