My hours are flexible, and when I scheduled to work this past Sunday it hadn’t even occurred to me that I would be missing the main act at Lawnparties. Normally I look forward to the opportunity to see live music, but in retrospect it’s not surprising that I completely forgot about this year’s Lawnparties. My excitement for the headliner dissipated as soon as the news broke.
I want to make it clear that I don’t intend to criticize a show that I didn’t attend, nor to judge the decision of our hard-working Undergraduate Student Government that put in the time to make it happen in the first place. I’ve heard mixed reviews so far, but I’m sure that a lot of students enjoyed Ruess’ show. I also understand that there are limited options available to USG and that there are many factors at play in the choice of headliner. However, regardless of how the show went or how the choice was made, the fact of Ruess’ appearance on the heels of last spring’s Big Sean controversy has depressing implications about how pop culture, politics and student groups interact.
While some might think it best to avoid reopening this can of worms, I think it worthwhile to revisit the Big Sean debate as a way to contextualize this year’s controversy-free headliner. As an additional stipulation, I want to make it clear that I agree with some of the objections raised by those who created or signed the petition to boycott Big Sean for his frequently misogynistic or homophobic lyrics, as well as his alleged history with sexual assault. I declined to sign the petition because it failed to locate this misogynistic or homophobic language in the context of the anti-blackness permeating the music industry or in the context of Big Sean’s working-class background.
Still, I do stand with the spirit behind the petition. By now we have all heard countless attacks on and defenses of political correctness — or political sensitivity — on campus. I believe that individuals should not have to endure the constant targeting of their marginalized group identity, no matter which form this targeting takes. Safe spaces are important and necessary in the right context, and while I don’t think that classrooms can or ever should be considered safe spaces, it’s not unreasonable to hope that a campus-wide activity meant to provide entertainment for all students be free of threatening, problematic or triggering language.
The problem is that a space free of threatening, problematic or triggering language excludes a large fraction of the pop music that is subversive, relevant to conversations about injustice and unsettling to the status quo in music and culture, even as it seems on the surface to rest within a corporate context. Any of this dangerous music will be deeply particular, concerned with detail, informed by lived experience in a society shaped by structural inequality. Big Sean is no Tupac or Kendrick, but his moderately detailed (if still quite generic) narratives about black working-class roots and the material excess of the music industry are comparatively artistically rich and relevant when one considers the unparticularized, generalized fill-in-the-blanks anonymity and blandness of Nate Ruess’ pathetic nice-guy schtick.
Nate Ruess is the corporate answer to the safe space. He is Coldplay sans catchiness. He neither offends nor uplifts anybody, in a streamlined package that may as well be focus group-tested. In lieu of attending a performance that would have cost me a long day’s paycheck, I combed through the lyrics on his solo album. I watched a couple of videos, one of which looked like a skinny Mark Wahlberg hopping around New York in Urban Outfitters clothes. Almost nothing disrupted the sense that this could be any self-indulgent, obnoxious 20-something white male ever. Some piano here, maybe some cheery strings, some yelling about being a romantic or something. I already forget.
I realize that Lawnparties is supposed to be a good time, not a celebration of our generation’s Greatest Living Artist. But it’s still worthwhile to note that Nate Ruess represents a calculated corporate strategy to appeal to the widest demographic by erasing the particular, the dangerously personal, the controversially honest. As I have already acknowledged, there are certainly many factors that go into the choice of a headliner each year, but it’s not far-fetched to imagine that the USG social committee might have been reluctant to pick a mainstream rap act right after the controversy generated by Big Sean.
It would be awesome to see a woman or queer person of color headlining soon (props to USG for picking Angel Haze as an opener last year). Still, if the choices were limited to another human blah like Ruess or an artist more similar to, say, Vince Staples or Kendrick Lamar — both of whom have been vocal on issues of poverty and police brutality, but could conceivably be the target of some petition due to potentially misogynistic lyrics — I would much prefer the latter.
#nomorefun
Max Grear is a sophomore from Wakefield, R.I. He can be reached at mgrear@princeton.edu.
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