🕒 This article is more than 10 years old (Published Jul 6, 2016).
Six years after releasing the album Swanlights with the ensemble of musicians known as Antony and the Johnsons, the English artist Anohni returns to the music scene, dropping the previous name “Antony Hegarty,” and releases her debut solo album Hopelessness. As the second openly transgender person who has been nominated for an Academy Award (with Angela Morley being the first), she re-enters the industry not only with a new moniker, but with a new musical style as well. Shifting her work, which was previously rather pastoral and orchestral, to pop-inspired electronic music, Anohni focuses on politics this time in an attempt to make a protest album.
The transition to a new genre is executed flawlessly. Joined by producers Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, Anohni delivers a successful combination of pounding and captivatingly glitchy synth-pop in “4 Degrees” and “Violent Men,” followed by the catchy and peppy songs “Watch Me” and “Execution,” in addition to offering ballads like “I Don’t Love You Anymore” and euphoric anthems like “Why Did You Separate Me from the Earth?” Her vocal performance is just as effective, with a wide range of emotions, which are vividly portrayed in each song, clearly indicating the promising potential of this album.
Unfortunately, the successful musical production is thrown off balance by the album’s draining lyrical content. Despite Anohni’s best attempts to deliver a dance protest album that addresses a wide range of topics, from foreign policy and capital punishment to climate change and mass surveillance, her fusion of music and politics instead creates a naive image of a bleak, nihilistic, and 1984-esque society facing impending doom.
“Execution,” for example, attempts to showcase the saddening truth that capital punishment is still actively practiced in several countries around the world, but Anohni’s simple recital of nations, “Like the Chinese and the Saudis / The North Koreans and The Nigerians,” accompanied with the repetitive hook “Execution / Execution / It’s an American dream” over a jingle-like melody, renders the song bereft of any emotional maturity.
Similarly, in the song “Obama,” the weakest track on the album, Anohni directly criticizes the president through verses such as “Now the news is you are spying / Executing without trial” and “All the hope drained from your face / Like children we believed”, while periodically chanting the president’s last name. Without giving a more diplomatic and well-thought-out criticism of Obama’s presidency, she fails to deliver the intended message and instead presents the listeners with a rather unpolished set of opinions.
On the other hand, when the lyrics become coated with poetic ambiguity, the album feels undoubtedly triumphant. “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” the only song on the album that does not have any explicitly political content, highlights Anohni’s mastery as a storyteller. When she sings “I was so lonely, all alone / When the phone rang, I wasn’t there / When my parents called, I just sat and stared” with a dejected voice, a more vulnerable and visceral side of Anohni is shown, allowing the listeners to feel the gravity of her personal struggles.
In “Why Did You Separate Me from the Earth,” she succeeds at creating a palpable vision of a dying environment, one that shows the dire repercussions of careless human activities, by singing “I don’t want your future / I’ll be born before you’re born / Why did you separate me, me from the Earth?” Lyrics like these contrast sharply with the bluntness of other songs on the record, and show that poeticism could convey her ideas more effectively.
Blurring the lines between music and politics is not a novelty, and Anohni is certainly not the first musician whose lyrics draw attention to current global issues. Just within England, M.I.A.’s single, “Borders,” which addresses the European migrant crisis, created controversy when it was released at the end of 2015, and, more recently, PJ Harvey’s track “Community of Hope,” from this year’s album The Hope Six Demolition Project, drew criticism from D.C. politicians, who considered Harvey’s apocalyptic depiction of Ward 7 as incorrect and incomplete.
Much of the criticism directed at politically charged music usually stems from observations that artists themselves do not offer any solutions to issues presented in their songs. But, it is important to understand that this type of disapproval is completely unwarranted, as musicians are certainly not expected to propose sound policies in their work. The purpose of such music is merely to raise consciousness and promote discussions about issues through a medium that is more accessible and less censored.
That said, the underlying problem of Anohni’s debut album is not that she does not complement her observations with robust solutions, but that she tries to encourage discussions about issues of layered complexity with haste and no tact. Had she dedicated more time towards developing nuanced and mature lyrics, the album could have easily become an indispensable component of leftwing music.
It would be unfair, however, to give her no credit. The album’s political content certainly should have been crafted with more care, but Anohni’s courage to lyrically tackle global issues as an openly transgender artist through a new musical genre deserves unequivocal praise. At its best, Hopelessness should be appreciated for its strong, albeit latent, message — that humanity must stand united, more so now than ever before.
Originally published in MIT’s newspaper “The Tech.”Cover photo courtesy of Alice O’Malley.
🕒 This article is more than 10 years old (Published Jan 21, 2016).
David Bowie, a legendary music and fashion icon, passed away on Jan. 10 after an 18-month battle with liver cancer. Following his death, numerous artists and public figures paid their respects to the singer via social media by thanking him for being a source of inspiration throughout their lives.
Last week, the entrance to the MIT’s Infinite Corridor was embellished with a banner that paid homage to Bowie through his verse from “Space Oddity,” while Lobby 7 greeted the MIT community with imagery of his eccentric outfits. Surely, every Bowie fan can cite a multitude of reasons why this icon should be remembered and appreciated, but I can understand why someone who did not follow his career might ask a simple question — why should we care about David Bowie?
There are the obvious reasons. He was one of the defining figures of the glam rock era, with his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust becoming almost equally important as Bowie himself. His love for theater allowed him to develop convincing characters and stories, which served as solid foundations for flamboyant and unforgettable shows.
He continuously experimented with music and created albums that — even when they did not receive widespread recognition — were ahead of their time. His outfits, just as outlandish, have become an artistic legacy of incontrovertible importance. He gracefully and successfully re-entered the music scene after a decade-long hiatus and managed to release two critically acclaimed albums before his death.
Besides his contribution to the world of art and entertainment, he was highly valued by other people, not only as a musician but also as a friend. In a recent interview for The New York Times, Iggy Pop described Bowie as “more of a benefactor than a friend” and that he “went a bit out of his way to bestow some good karma on [Iggy Pop].” Tony Visconti, Bowie’s producer, said that he was an “extraordinary man, full of love and life” in his Facebook post following Bowie’s death.
But, in order to completely grasp why he was an important global figure, perhaps we should try to understand what he meant to those who never had the opportunity to meet him in person: children, teenagers, young adults, parents, grandparents, and dedicated music fans across the world.
I was first introduced to Bowie’s music as a 14-year-old, when a friend of mine directed me to his songs “Ashes to Ashes” and “China Girl.” It would be a stretch to say that I’ve been a devout fan of his music ever since. While his most prominent albums have become essential components of my music collection, I can’t say that I know the majority of his songs by heart or that I have appreciated the entirety of his work.
However, since that day, I have committedly watched many of his interviews and studied his life and career, because there was something inexplicably touching about his character that made me want to learn more about this unique artist. It wasn’t until 2014 that I finally understood what made Bowie so special to me.
Two years ago, when I visited the exhibition “David Bowie,” the first retrospective collection of his work, in Berlin’s Martin-Gropious-Bau, I realized for the first time that David Bowie was more than just an icon in the history of music, fashion, and entertainment.
Looking through the displays of his handwritten lyrics, original costumes, music videos, interviews, and album artwork, I sensed that his two opposing traits, grandiose eccentricity and subdued vulnerability, were, paradoxically, closely related. Whereas his style and demeanor at times made him seem otherworldly and almost inaccessible, his unapologetically honest character, showcased through his evolving work and emotional expressiveness, helped me see that he was just another human being, but who was — unlike many of us — not afraid to express himself and defy society’s oppressive stereotypes. In his own special way, David Bowie was the world’s favorite outcast.
So, why should we care?
We should care because he undoubtedly changed the music industry and inspired other musicians, but also because he achieved so much more. He inspired actors. He inspired designers. He served as a role model (or anti-role model, for that matter) to children, teenagers, rebels, music fans, and adults who wanted to immortalize their youth. He wore outlandish outfits that remain avant-garde even today. He played with the notion of ambiguous sexuality when the world was struggling to accept the idea of alternative sexual identity. He challenged the world by fighting the old-fashioned concepts of polarized masculinity and femininity. In other words, most importantly, he showed that there is value in being a misfit.
Rest in peace, David Bowie. The world will never forget what a bright and shining star you were.
Originally published in MIT’s newspaper “The Tech.”
🕒 This essay is more than 10 years old (Published Oct 13, 2015).
Meds, clothes, and intellectual property. Probably the last three words you would imagine together in a sentence. But, as preposterous as this may sound, I would say that the fashion industry can learn a lot from the pharmaceutical industry. These two seemingly disparate worlds actually have something in common—a market failure: unstable and undefined intellectual property (IP) rights.
To disentangle this paradox, we need to dissect the IP issues in both industries, and then draw a two-fold comparison to show how current IP challenges in the pharmaceutical industry can actually be analyzed to build foundations for IP policy-making in fashion.
I definitely do not aim to offer sound policy for rectifying these issues in both industries, but I do think it’s valuable to point out why a very notorious industry, known for its highly competitive and sometimes unscrupulous regulatory processes, should be seen as a template for protecting the work of fashion designers, people who unfortunately often live at the blurry intersection of art and commerce.
Unstable and Undefined Intellectual Property Rights in Fashion
Why would one even think about this issue in the fashion industry? Well, more than anything, there is an economic importance. A 2008 report from the U.S. Census Bureau estimated $217 billion in annual sales from clothing and accessories, while shoes generated $27 billion through retail. A more recent report in The Legal Intelligencer cites $300 billion in sales as the industry’s annual revenue, which shows that the industry contributes a significant amount of revenue to the US economy and that the sales are likely to continue growing.
Despite its economic importance, at the same time, the industry lacks well-defined and established laws and policies that protect intellectual property in US-based fashion, which can easily allow others to copy ideas in fashion without significant repercussions. This, however, is not the case with non-US branches of the fashion industry, such as the European one, where fashion designs can receive up to twenty-five years of protection.
Recently, there have been few attempts at solving the issue of intellectual property in fashion through copyright, but they have all, unfortunately, failed. For instance, The Design Piracy Prohibition Act of 2006 never passed from Congress to the next steps approval, and the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act of 2010 was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar at the end of 2010, but has not since moved forward. The Innovative Design Protection Act of 2012, which would have allowed protection of fashion designs up to three years, was introduced at the end of 2012 but was never passed.
While fashion designs themselves cannot be protected by copyright, some aspects—unique prints, patterns, and color arrangements—can be protected “only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article,” according to the U.S. Copyright Act.
Of course, one can immediately see how this vague rule can be easily surpassed to copy an idea without creating ground for litigation. For example, in a hypothetical situation, if a designer uses a triangular color-blocking pattern—a pattern that is not novel—to create a novel line of color-blocked scarves, which no one has presumably thought of before, the designer will not be able to protect neither the color-blocking scarves nor the design as the triangular color-blocking pattern might not be identified separately from the utilitarian aspects of the scarves. An obvious global example is Burberry’s popular cashmere scarf in heritage check, whose characteristic pattern can be easily replicated with only slight modifications and used to sell unbranded, Burberry-like scarves on popular commerce websites, such as Amazon.
Designers can partially rectify these issues by turning to trade dress, a part of trademark law governed by the Lanham Act, or design patents, which are available under the U.S. Patent Act. Trade dress allows designers to protect their brand names and logos, as well as the visual characteristics of a product if they denote the source of the product to consumers and if they are not functional, which effectively excludes apparel since apparel designs are considered to be functional.
Design patents, on the other hand, will protect the look of a design and ornamentation as long as “it is novel, nonfunctional, and nonobvious to a designer of ordinary skill in the art.” Once again, it is clear that there is great degree of freedom in interpreting this statement, essentially leaving designers without a guaranteed safety net. On top of that, design patents are generally not applicable to apparel because of its functionality.
You still might be thinking: why does anyone care? After all, if a person is a loyal Oscar de la Renta customer, for instance, it is reasonable to assume that they would not bother looking into non-original garment that’s sold for less. While the assumption is valid, as it was shown in BBC’s popular 2007 documentary The Secret World of Haute Couture, there is only a very small and exclusive global community that religiously attends designers’ publicly-inaccessible runway shows and that purchases these exclusive designer garments.
The rest—in fact, the majority—of the population has easy access to non-original products, which can be classified into: counterfeits, knockoffs, and generics.
Counterfeits are those products that are produced with the intent of being sold as originals, while knockoffs are derivative products that are not meant to be sold on the black market as originals, but they have been designed by adopting one or many ideas from an original product.
For instance, using again the example of Burberry’s popular cashmere scarf, a counterfeit would be a replica of the scarf that’s illegally marketed and sold as the original one, while a knockoff would be a Burberry-like scarf that’s sold on Amazon under a different name.
Scarf, Burberry originalScarf, Burberry knockoff
It is therefore clear how a counterfeit might negatively impact revenues and profits of a branded fashion house, but one might naturally wonder how high-end fashion knockoffs can have a negative impact if they are marketed under a completely different seller, such as a retail-clothing company.
As Ferrill and Tanhenco describe in their paper, knockoffs are not prohibited by any U.S. law—while counterfeits are regulated by trademark law and the Lanham Act—which means they are even more dangerous for the world of fashion, because they hurt designers both economically and creatively.
Particularly, the knockoffs can hurt designers economically because those customers who are willing to pay enough for a high-end fashion product, but also do not mind purchasing a knockoff, will buy the knockoff at a lower price, which will effectively decrease designers’ revenues. As a consequence, knockoffs will also negatively affect the creative side of designers’ works; without protection over their creations, the designers will lose incentive to invest in developing novel designs.
One can think of a situation where this would be particularly relevant—if the creation of novel clothing line requires high costs of production due to a specific material or intricate pattern-making process, a designer might not have the incentive to incur high costs if the product can be easily copied and sold as a knockoff in retail-clothing stores, such as H&M or Zara.
Finally, one can think about the long-term negative impacts in this industry caused by the lack of strong protection over intellectual property. While counterfeits and knockoffs represent immediate threats to designers and high-end fashion houses, it is important to understand that there is a third type of threat—not yet presented and analyzed in the literature—which comes from products that have lost their patentability potential due to their overuse over an extended period of time.
I call these fashion items generics as they are closely comparable to generic drugs in the pharmaceutical industry, drugs marketed under their chemical name that are identical to corresponding brand drugs in qualities such as dose, strength, and efficacy. It is easy to see how generics can develop in fashion if there is no firm protection over a new design and product. For example, if a designer creates a trapezoid-neck t-shirt, which has presumably not yet appeared in the world of fashion, and is unable to protect this unique design, the t-shirt will be able to get copied as a knockoff in the near future and finally become a generic in the long run.
Put differently, after an extended period of overuse in the retail-clothing industry (assuming that the product prevails throughout multiple seasons), the concept of trapezoid-neck will become obvious and not new, effectively annulling the patentability of the original design idea.
Generics do not economically impact designers and high-end houses in any different way than knockoffs do, because they stem from knockoffs, but they can hurt them creatively in a significantly more damaging way. If designers fear that their unique designs will become generic due to uncontrollable production and imitation, they will not have any incentive to reveal their ideas to the world of fashion. This, in turn, can impact the overall economy by not bringing new high-end products to the market and it can negatively affect the creativeness of the industry—simply because the designers’ ideas might be left concealed and unrealized.
So, we can identify the reason why the fashion market experiences economic and creative instability: because there isn’t a cohesive U.S. law that would establish relevant policies for rectifying the issue of intellectual property in fashion. How would we go about fixing this? This is when it is worth looking at a similar problem in the pharmaceutical industry to draw a parallel and and learn whether any IP principles from pharma can be applied to fashion.
The Issue of Intellectual Property Rights in the Pharmaceutical Industry
The pharmaceutical industry, despite its seemingly irrelevant connection to the fashion industry, faces a similar problem. Specifically, as the result of the industry’s prominent focus on research and development, especially in the field of drug development, patents are viewed as valuable assets and reliable representatives of a company’s standing in the market.
As Grabowski describes in his paper, it takes several hundred million dollars to discover, develop, gain approval, and finally send a new drug to the market. The costs of R&D are significantly high because most new drug candidates never actually reach the market due to various reasons, such as toxicity, manufacturing difficulties, and economic and competitive factors.
Even more importantly, if there is no patent protection over a new drug, imitators can easily duplicate the drug for very low costs. The costs of investing in research and developing new drugs can therefore often seem daunting to pharma executives who are aware that, especially in the field of drug development, rapid reverse engineering can lead to easy imitation of any compound.
Given that patents are currently used in the pharmaceutical industry to address these problems, one might wonder whether there is truly any similarity between fashion and pharma. It is certainly true that patenting has already been in use to protect new drugs during development, but the real issue is that pharmaceutical companies often do not have bandwidth to maintain a dedicated IP team that can strategize and help the pharmaceutical company extract meaningful profit from the generated IP.
Furthermore, any drug-producing pharmaceutical company also has to draw a distinct line between original products and those that enter the market and negatively affect company’s revenues, such as counterfeit drugs, derivative drugs, and low-cost imitations more commonly known as generics, which enter the market after the original drug’s patent has expired. These products are analogous to counterfeits, knockoffs, and generics in fashion as is evident from the following analysis.
Counterfeit drugs are fake medicines that are sold illegally under the same brand name of the original drug. As FDA describes them, they can contain the same ingredients as the original drug—although they might have no active ingredient at all—but the ingredients are incorporated at the wrong dose. One can see how they are analogous to counterfeits in the fashion industry, which are also marketed as high-end products but they usually lack in the quality or intricacy of the original design. Certainly, counterfeit drugs negatively impact the pharmaceutical industry because they can directly affect the company’s profits if they succeed at entering the market illegally and deceiving the customers.
While the term “knockoff” is not officially used in the pharmaceutical industry, and is often interchangeable with the term “counterfeit”, I use the term knockoff drugs to refer to those products that are derivatives of the original product with slight changes. For instance, a drug can be a knockoff if it performs a similar function as the original brand-name drug but has some properties changed, such as its functional groups, thermodynamics- or kinetics-based properties.
The damaging impact of these types of drugs is clear—they are not directly infringing on IP rights of the brand-name drug’s company because the knockoff drugs have different properties, but they are effectively a variation on a theme and, as such, exploit the high costs incurred by the brand-name drug’s company for R&D. Just like the knockoffs in fashion industry, which hurt designers both economically and creatively, knockoff drugs can hurt the pharmaceutical industry if companies do not ensure that their patents protect a broad spectrum of intellectual properties.
Finally, generic drugs are identical copies of brand-name drugs that enter the market after the original drug’s patent has expired. According to the FDA, they are important options that allow greater access to health care for all Americans. For the pharmaceutical industry, they can be perceived as the least threatening option because they cannot legally enter the market before the expiration of the original drug’s patent; in other words, there is an extended period of time for the brand-name drug to generate revenue before generics enter and become competition.
However, one can see how generics would be a problem for pharma if there was no clear patenting system available, which is currently the case with fashion industry. Generic drugs would immediately enter the market and, after their use over an extended period of time, annul the aspects of novelty and non-obviousness for the original brand-name drug and therefore diminish its patentability.
Sadly, this is indeed currently an issue in the fashion industry, where knockoffs can immediately lead to development of generics without leaving any time period for the high-end products to succeed at generating maximum revenue.
In her paper, Vinita Radhakrishnan proposes two strategies of strategically protecting intellectual property in the pharmaceutical industry that can rectify the previously-mentioned issues in pharma and maximize profit, and that are relevant to the examples of counterfeits and knockoffs in the fashion industry.
She proposes the use of trade secret protection for those products that are difficult to reverse-engineer or those that have value because of their secret nature. She uses an example of a biomarker that can assess the efficiency of a drug three times faster than a regular compound, and as such, can be used to optimize the company’s development, which means it should not be accessible to the public.
If placed under trade secret, the biomarker will be protected as long as the secrecy is maintained; in other words, the protection is not limited by term. On the other hand, if the biomarker is patented, the company will likely run into difficulties because the use of biomarker by another firm is difficult to audit. It is worth looking at how Radhakrishnan’s advice can be used to address the issue of counterfeit drugs.
As most drugs are easily reverse-engineered, trade secret protection could be used for those compounds that a pharmaceutical company uses as a crucial part of its drug development. As a critical component of the drug development process that is protected under secrecy, this compound will ensure the uniqueness of the developed drug so that its function cannot be copied easily. While this likely will not prevent all counterfeit sellers from distributing fake drugs to the market, it can certainly make the process harder because the difference between the original drug and counterfeit drug’s functionalities will be augmented with trade secret protection.
Conversely, patenting will work best for those products that can be easily reverse-engineered, such as a drug molecule or synthesis process. As Radhakrishnan describes in her paper, patenting does provide strong protection under law, but it comes at the expense of limited protection term, high protection and maintenance costs, as well as many exceptions to the definition of patentable matter. More importantly—and the most relevant aspect of patenting in pharma to fashion—is the drafting of specification.
Radhakrishnan suggests that the drafter of a patent should ensure that the patent is drafted to maximize the broadest possible scope while not infringing on neighboring patents. Her suggestion addressing this particular aspect of IP protection is crucial for knockoff drugs: the broader the scope of the patent is, the harder it will be to develop a derivative of the drug that’s not infringing on IP rights of the brand-name drug’s company.
It is important to note that patenting does not always benefit the entire industry. Another problematic aspect of biological research, which is an indispensable component of both the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, is the issue of anti-commons. As Michael Heller and Rebecca Eisenberg noted, too many IP rights in the upstream portion of R&D can hinder the development of downstream R&D.
According to their findings, product-developing companies have to incur high transaction costs to identify and clear rights, while academic scientists—unlike commercial scientists, who face similar problems to those of product-developing firms—seldom face patent enforcement, even when they ignore them. However, scientists in both the commercial and academic settings have trouble gaining access to materials and data that they can’t easily replicate in their own laboratories.
One can see how this essentially leads to a paradoxical problem: too many patents and high transaction costs can weaken the enforcement of patent rights, thereby increasing the possibility of unauthorized access and use, which effectively decreases the risk of anti-commons. At the same time, if the owners of the patent successfully exclude others from gaining access to their materials, users will have to incur high costs to gain access to the materials, thereby decreasing the possibility of unauthorized access, which increases the risk of anti-commons.
In their paper on intellectual commons and property in synthetic biology, Oye and Wellhausen succinctly summarize this issue through a four-quadrant graph that distinguishes private from public ownership, and clearly defined rights from ambiguously defined rights. As they describe, synthetic biologists mostly agree that processes such as protocols and design methods should fall within public ownership with clearly defined rights, while commercializable devices should also have clearly defined rights, but should fall within private ownership. They all agree that ambiguously defined rights, both within public and private ownership, serve as a threat and danger to development in the field.
Looking at all these issues together, it’s clear the pharmaceutical and fashion industry face similar problems—despite the differences between their internal operations and overall purpose. While the fashion industry’s operations focus primarily on design and transformation of raw materials, such as cotton and fossil fuels, into functional products, pharmaceutical industry places heavy emphasis on health-oriented research and drug development. Nevertheless, both industries have to combat the challenge of intellectual property rights.
Applying lessons from pharma to development of IP policies in fashion
The two most promising solutions to designers are design patents and trade dress, but as it was mentioned earlier, they are not applicable to apparel due to its functionality. Therefore, there needs to be a clearer set of policies that can protect apparel as well since, given the statistics shown earlier, apparel generates a greater percentage of revenue for the U.S. fashion industry. Using the issues and suggestions presented in the section about IP issues in pharma, one can think about potential solutions to the IP problems in fashion. My goal here is to provide suggestions for mitigating the negative effects of counterfeits, knockoffs, and generics in the fashion industry.
While counterfeits are regulated by trademark law, designers have no protection over their design process, which means that they have to keep their designs in complete secrecy until the designs are presented in runway shows or until they are worn by celebrities in public. Even so, sellers can still replicate the product and its design process because it would likely be difficult to prove that a person was replicating a fashion garment for the purpose of selling it on the black market.
Using a concept similar to trade secret, presented by Radhakrishnan in the case of pharma, policy makers should develop a law that protects the entire design technique and treats it as a secretive process. Because the design process is not similar to a synthesis process, and would therefore be difficult to reverse-engineer, it should be placed under an act that fully protects it without any time limit.
This way, if designers are using unique materials or an intricate production process, they can protect the “upstream” levels of their design technique, which would likely discourage others from attempting to obtain the same materials and knowledge about the design process. Of course, an illegal seller could still find a way to try replicating the garment, but by having a law that protects the design technique and process, designers would make this endeavor far more difficult.
Developing policies for knockoffs is a lot trickier. Drawing a parallel to the pharmaceutical industry, knockoffs can be seen as derivative products that are easy to reverse-engineer: because they won’t be exact replicates of a designer’s original garment, they are quite easy to develop through imitation. A knockoff designer simply needs to copy a single visual idea from the original designer and find a way to subtly incorporate it into a mass-production, ready-to-wear product.
It makes sense why designers would want to have patents over their final products in this case, but that doesn’t mean they should be granted these rights easily. To understand why this might be the case, it is worth looking at two examples of high-end fashion where patenting would not have benefited the fashion industry.
In a recent famous case ChristianLouboutin v. Yves Saint Laurent (2012), Christian Louboutin sued Yves Saint Laurent for selling all-red shoes, which—according to Louboutin—looked similar to Louboutin’s women shoes with red soles and different colored tops. While the court ruled that Louboutin can have trademark protection over shoes with red soles, it did not grant Louboutin permission to claim trademark over monochromatically red shoes.
Case 1: Christian Louboutin ShoeCase 2: Yves Saint Laurent, Mondrian dress
This exemplary case highlights how the concept of anti-commons could also become present in fashion if patenting was used more freely. More precisely, because fashion is a form of art, it is hard to distinguish what deserves to be patented, as patenting art forms can easily exclude others from using them in a way that’s originally intended to be non-restricting.
Simply put, it is reasonable that the court didn’t give permission to Louboutin to have trademark protection over monochromatically red shoes because that would essentially imply that Louboutin could sue any designer in the future who incorporates color red in their shoes. If designers are allowed to place strong protection over their final products, it can hinder other designers’ creativity and prevent progression of fashion.
Another example is Yves Saint Laurent’s famous “Mondrian” day dress, a wool jersey in color blocks of white, red, blue, black, and yellow, which was Saint Laurent’s adaptation of Piet Mondrian’s famous painting “Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow.” The dress has become one of the most important pieces in the history of fashion, yet—even though it is a high-end fashion product—the dress is a knockoff of another artist’s work.
It is unlikely that fashion connoisseurs today would consider this to be a non-inventive knockoff, but the dress undeniably represents an issue that the fashion industry is so fervently trying to combat today. So, once again, placing a patent over any design or visual feature to simply prevent creation of knockoffs would certainly hinder progression of fashion, leading to a “fashion anti-commons” issue, which is why it makes sense to have exceptions when defining patentable matter in this field of work as well.
With that in mind, what is the right way to approach this issue and still preserve designers’ intellectual rights? One way to develop a set of potential solutions is to use the framework presented in Oye and Wellhausen’s paper.
Currently, the U.S. fashion industry is having problems in the territory of intellectual property rights because the policies are based in the two quadrants of ambiguously defined rights. Policy-makers need to establish laws that can move fashion-oriented policies into the other two quadrants, by clearly defining rights for designers so that it’s transparent what can be a designer’s private ownership and what should be “intellectual commons.”
Of course, there are many ways to categorize aspects of fashion design into these categories as these decisions would be highly subjective. I propose one potential solution: categorizing these aspects in terms of structural and visual non-obviousness and innovativeness. The goal of the following policy template would be to provide designers with a firm set of rules, which would not allow for any ambiguity when deciding whether one should claim patents over their creations.
If the structural design of any fashion product, from simple accessories to apparel items, is non-obvious, and has therefore never been used before, the designer should be allowed to claim patent over such creation. For instance, in a hypothetical situation, if a designer has created trapezoid-neckline T-shirts, which therefore showcase a structural feature that has presumably not been used in fashion before, the designer should be able to protect the trapezoid-neckline structure so that this feature cannot be used by other high-end or retail-store designers who would want to mimic the product. Therefore, the designer would have private ownership over the product with clearly defined rights.
On the other hand, visual features of the product that do not in any way represent a designer’s official logo or any symbols that are officially recognized as the designer’s trademark visual features should not be patentable. In another hypothetical situation, if a designer created a line of simple dresses—which are not structurally non-obvious—that showcase an arrangement of colors gold, black, and white in a non-innovative way (for instance, a simple juxtaposition of colors along the dress), the designer should not be able to claim a patent over this dress. This way, visual characteristics, such as common patterns and colors, would be placed in the quadrant of public ownership and would constitute “intellectual fashion commons,” those aspects of design that can be used freely by all designers.
One exception to the latter rule would be the use of visually non-obvious and innovative patterns. For example, if a designer created a line of dresses that featured a specific tri-color arrangement on each dress, such that the first color was contained in an all-over triangular form, the second color was contained in an all-over circular form, with the rest of the dress featuring the third color, the designer should be able to claim patent over this specific visual arrangement, but not over the entire dress and the colors used on the dress.
Applying this rule to the Louboutin vs. Saint Laurent case, Louboutin would be able to claim patent over shoes whose soles have one color that’s different from the color of the rest of the shoe. This would prevent other designers from painting the soles of their shoes with one color, but it would still allow them to use the color for changing other features of the shoe. Therefore, this exception can be viewed as sitting in the area of clearly-defined rights, but halfway between private and public ownership because it will require a professional’s objective assessment of the visual feature’s non-obviousness and innovativeness.
Finally, as generics develop from knockoffs after the knockoffs have been used in fashion for an extended period of time, clearer policies that address knockoffs will consequently hinder development of generics. If designers are able to place strong protection over their designs and ideas, there will be an extended period of time in which high-end fashion products can generate maximum revenue before protection expires and before knockoffs enter the market and persist as generics in the long run.
Now, in the context of fashion at least, some of high-end products might survive only throughout few seasons. As a result, generics might never enter and prevail in the market if the “seasonality” of the high-end product expires before the protection over the product does. This, of course, can be seen as an additional benefit in the case of generics.
All this could certainly impose more creative protection, but I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the drawbacks of my proposed solutions. While these suggestions might lead to firmer and more helpful policies for fashion designers, they would inevitably be unfair to those designers and ideas that warrant special exceptions. This is particularly true because fashion is a form of art, and developing policies for this field of work requires subjective—and therefore not always fair—decisions.
🕒 This essay is more than 10 years old (Published Sep 28, 2015).
This was a eulogy I wrote for my grandmother Azra, who passed away in September 2015. Known for her charisma and glamorous sense of style, my grandma was a talented puppeteer and a force of nature. The original text in Croatian is included at the end.
At first, you were kind of a phenomenon. Denis and Dean’s grandma from Norway who always brought presents. All the kids in the neighborhood knew who you were because the two of us always had the latest merch. From Pokémon to Harry Potter, you were up to date with the latest cartoons and trends, even though you probably had no idea who Harry Potter was or what a Pokémon looked like. We were so excited whenever you visited—we knew you would always bring some cool Norwegian fashion, some tasty Norwegian chocolate, and some unique Norwegian souvenir no one else in our neighborhood had.
And then you left the north, came back to Mostar, and moved in across the street. The presents stopped, but you regularly kept a good chunk of your monthly retirement cash in the living room so that you could surprise us with a treat.
“Pop over to Grandma Azra’s” became a new phrase in our lives. Every visit to your place was a high-end theatrical production: you were the main character in all your ornate stories while you showered us with unsolicited pieces of self-improvement advice.
“Whatever you do, I’ll tolerate” you’d say, “but don’t lie and don’t be stingy.”
The two of us laughed at you. I think we laughed because you found a way to always make yourself the center of the universe. And because you genuinely thought very highly of your own opinions.
In these stories, it was never the case that you were excited to see others, but others were excited to see you. No matter who was coming over for a visit, you always needed to look like a Hollywood star. You were so gracious with your compliments any time we did well at school, but you were also a harsh critic any time we did you wrong. You had to eat that special, organic tomato from the farmer’s market and had no patience for any other “fake” tomatoes. The funny thing is that you couldn’t even tell the difference any time we bought the “fake” ones and told you they were organic. You had no interest in what was happening in the world; you preferred to live in your own imagination, where—like the true Mother, the Queen you were—you had control over everything.
We would complain about you, Grandma, because you were a lot sometimes. Deep inside, though, I think we were all envious of your self-respect. Unlike many of us, you had the strength and courage to unapologetically love yourself. And that unapologetic love of yourself is what made you so incredibly lovable and popular to others.
In these last few months, your life started to slowly fade away. You no longer talked, and you no longer laughed. Your playful eyes lost that sparkle while your thoughts traveled endlessly through a distant past, through those days when you used to hang out with your friends by Neretva, through those days when you lived in Cernica and sang and danced.
For the last chapter of your life, you ended up in state in which you never wanted to end up. We, however, choose to not remember you like this. In our memories, you will be the magnificent Grandma you always were to us: warm, affectionate, gracious, honest, full of love, and so very full of life.
You never talked about faith or your concept of God, and I don’t think you thought too much about what would happen when you left this world. Whatever your view was, we know there is a special place up there for your radiant, carefree soul.
And so, Grandma, when you soar through the winds and the clouds today, and when you arrive at the celestial gates, far away in the eternal stillness of this universe, knock on those doors in the best edition of yourself: with a blow-dried hairdo, wearing red lipstick, in your velvet blue tracksuit with a brooch above your heart, and with a big, bright smile.
And as you reunite with Grandpa Nana up there, who’s been waiting for you patiently and faithfully for twenty years, we can already hear what you are going to say.
“My dear kids. If only you could have seen how excited Grandpa Nana was to see me.”
Kraljica Majka
Isprva si bila fenomen. Deanova i Denisova baka iz Norveške koja uvijek donosi poklone. Sva djeca iz naselja su znala za tebe jer smo nas dvojica uvijek imali najnovije igračke. Od Pokémona do Harry Pottera, uvijek si bila upućena u moderne crtiće i trendove iako vjerojatno nisi imala pojma ni što su Pokémoni ni tko je Harry Potter. Tvoje dolaske iz Norveške smo željno iščekivali kao djeca jer smo znali da ćeš sa sobom ponijeti neke norveške čokolade, norvešku robu, i norveške suvenire koje nitko drugi u naselju neće imati.
A onda si postala dio naših života kad si se vratila i uselila u zgradu prekoputa. Poklona više nije bilo, ali si zato u ladici svog stola u dnevnom boravku redovno i velikodušno odvajala dio svoje penzije kako bi nam dala da se počastimo.
“ ‘Ajde otiđi do bake“ je postala nova fraza u našim životima. Svaki odlazak do tebe je postao svojevrsna predstava; bila si glavni lik u svojim pričama dok bi nam davala savjete kako da poradimo na sebi.
“Sve mogu tolerisati,“ znala bi nam reći, “ali me nemoj lagati i ne budi škrt.“
Nas dvojica bismo ti se smijali. Smijali smo se jer si u svojim prepričavanjima uvijek nekako bila centar pozornosti.
Nikada ne bi znala reći da si se nekome obradovala jer bi se drugi uvijek tebi obradovali. Uredila bi se i izgledala kao zvijezda bez obzira na to tko ti je dolazio u posjetu. Veličanstveno si se naglas divila našim uspjesima u školi, i bila ponosna na nas, ali si nas maestralno znala i kritizirati. Jela si poseban paradajz jer su ti svi ostali kupovni bili bezveze, iako nisi nikada osjetila neku razliku kada bismo ti podvalili. Nisi htjela znati što se dešava u svijetu jer ti je bilo draže živjeti u svojoj mašti, gdje si kao prava Kraljica Majka, imala kontrolu nad svime.
Znali smo malo roncati na tebe, bako, jer si ponekad bila naporna. Ali, mislim da smo u principu svi bili pomalo ljubomorni na tvoje samopoštovanje. Čak i u svojim kasnim godinama, za razliku od većine nas, ti si imala snage i hrabrosti da sebe u potpunosti voliš. I upravo je tvoja ljubav prema samoj sebi privlačila ljude ka tebi.
Ovih zadnjih par mjeseci, tvoj život se postepeno gasio. Više nisi pričala i nisi se smijala. Tvoje razigrane oči su izgubile sjaj dok su tvoje nedostižne misli plovile kroz prošlost, kroz dane kad si se družila s rajom na Neretvi, kad si živjela u Cernici, i kad si pjevala i plesala.
Kraj svog života si dočekala u stanju u kojem nikada nisi željela biti. Međutim, mi te nećemo takvu pamtiti. Za nas ćeš uvijek ostati u našim sjećanjima kao naša čudesna baka: iskrena, topla, dostojanstvena, nasmijana, puna ljubavi, i puna života, koja nas je uvijek dočekivala raširenih ruku i s velikim osmijehom.
Nikada nisi pričala ni o vjeri ni o Bogu i vjerojatno nisi nikada previše razmišljala što će biti onog dana kada napustiš zemaljski život. Ali, mi znamo da se za tvoju lepršavu dušu čuva posebno mjesto na nebesima.
Zato, draga bako, kada se danas vineš kroz vjetre i oblake, i kada dosegneš nebeska vrata u svemirskim tišinama, pokucaj na njih u svojem najboljem izdanju, onako kako te se mi sjećamo—kao našu Kraljicu Majku, u svojoj baršun plavoj trenerci sa brošom preko srca, isfeniranom frizurom, crvenim karminom, i velikim, toplim osmijehom.
I dok se pridružuješ dedi Nani, koji te vjerno čeka već dvadeset godina, kao da već čujemo što nam želiš reći dok napuštaš ovaj svijet.
“Moja draga djeco, ne mogu vam opisati kako se Nana obradovao kada me ugledao.”
🕒 This essay is more than 10 years old (Published Apr 8, 2015).
Every day, each of us gives a live performance. That might seem like a presumptuous statement but I would argue that our everyday activities are indeed a form of subconscious performance art. This seemingly paradoxical concept can be demystified if we discuss such activities in terms of restored behavior.
According to Richard Schechner, a renowned performance theorist, restored behavior is any set of “marked, framed, or heightened” habits, rituals, and routines of life. In other words, restored behavior signifies those actions—from simple gestures to ritual performances—that have become a part of our lives, but have become independent of the source that brought them to existence.
What would be an example of that? In my life, and I think in the lives of many others, the act of smiling in day-to-day activities and encounters can be seen as an example of restored behavior. And that’s because, when we smile, we certainly can convey sincere and visceral feelings to others, but we also might smile to convey something that’s more calculated. What’s the difference?
As human beings, provided that we are not discussing cases of complete isolation, we are in constant communication with other people during our daily activities, habits, and rituals. Whether it’s simply the short-term process of making eye contact with a stranger on the street or sharing our intimate emotions with close friends or significant others, we regularly exchange both verbal and non-verbal means of communication.
It’s easy to assume that most of our physical reactions during communication are sincere and visceral, but the truth is that many of our gestures and expressions are programmed and dictated by external factors, such as cultural rules and societal pressure. Many, if not all, of these actions are restored behaviors—they exist as indispensable components of our personalities, yet they are completely detached from the inherent physical causes that would normally bring them to existence.
As Schechner describes in his essay on restoration of behavior, “even if I feel myself wholly to be myself, acting independently, only a little investigating reveals that the units of behavior that comprise me were not invented by me.” This does not mean that we are controlled or brainwashed by the society or other external factors; it simply means that we have subconsciously transformed our inherent gestures and reactions to channels of communication that convey our attitudes and establish our presence. Because of this, many of our everyday activities—such as smiling—can be understood as a restored behavior, and therefore as performance.
Smiling is a facial expression that is an innate feature of all human beings. While the associations linked to the act of smiling vary culturally, in most cultures, smiling is perceived as a physical reaction that signifies joy and happiness or a physical expression that shows person’s amiability and demeanor.
In many cases, it is a result of state of content and happiness, which can be caused by various factors, such as a humorous movie, positive memories, dancing, and attraction to another person. However, the act of smiling can also be employed in situations that are not necessarily associated with content and happiness.
For example, in Western cultures, people often smile when shaking hands or posing for a photograph. Politicians and public speakers are commonly seen smiling during speeches and presentations even though these events are often anxiety-inducing and not something that would naturally make a person smile. In the latter case, it can be tempting to think that the act of smiling is fake, but instead, it should be identified as restored behavior, which is a crucial component of person’s everyday subconscious performance.
In my own life, smiling has become such an important part of my everyday communication that I often forget when I am sincerely pleased or genuinely happy. If I am buying lunch or shopping for clothes, in most cases I will smile to the cashier or the person in the store as they are likely to greet me with a smile as well. If I have to communicate with workers in government offices, such as the Social Security Office, I always talk with a smile on my face.
Why? I most certainly am not happy or pleased when I am filing documents for a new ID card or when I am in a hurry to grab lunch and run back to class. Still, I—and many other people—approach these situations with a smile because it is established that “a smile can open many doors.”
What this truly means is that by employing a restored behavior and showcasing a unique, subtle type of performance, we are exercising amiability as means of facilitating communication, easing the tension, and ultimately—getting what we want.
For the beforehand mentioned cases, I am never particularly pleased or happy, but I always revert to the act of smiling because this framed and heightened behavior helps me reach the outcome of my desires.
In the case of buying lunch and clothes, smiling lets the other person know that I am an amiable person and that I am hoping for a good and helpful service. When I am smiling to the workers in government offices, I am hoping that my amiable demeanor will facilitate any required processes in these institutions and help me in case there is something wrong with my documentation. I am smiling not because I am content or happy, but because this restored behavior serves to showcase a delicate performance that conveys my attitude and personality traits to a person engaged with me in a two-way communication.
These examples support Schechner’s view of restored behavior: smiling in these situations has become completely independent of the original, physical source—happiness and sense of content—that would normally make a person smile. Instead, for the purpose of conveying a message and attaining a specific goal, smiling has become a framed and heightened behavior, employed in those situations that are not associated with the physical feeling of joy.
Interestingly, in his essay, Schechner notes that restored behaviors vary enormously from culture to culture, but he doesn’t elaborate on this statement. It’s nonetheless important to address this phenomenon because restored behaviors are in many cases dictated by cultural norms and societal conventions, so it is natural to pose question about the validity of restored behavior across different cultures. To be precise, while smiling and amiability can be seen as one type of performance in my own life—because I have always lived in similar cultural environments—one might think that this performance would not be valid or sustainable in other cultures.
For example, in some Asian countries, smiling is used to conceal embarrassment or emotional pain or to represent confusion and anger. In some Eastern European cultures, smiling at strangers can be perceived as odd, suspicious, or even frightening. In these cases, is smiling still a restored behavior and does it constitute a performance act?
Even though the act of smiling is associated with different interpretations in these particular cultures, it is still a restored behavior because it is independent of the inherent source that brings it to existence.
Members of specific Asian cultures will smile to detract attention from their actual feelings, so smiling is yet again used in instances where it wouldn’t be happening naturally. The example of Eastern European cultures might be trickier to understand, but the existence of restored behavior still applies. Here, we can view the lack of smiling as a restored behavior; that is, even if the sight of stranger on the street might evoke sincere physical feelings of happiness and joy, a person will purposefully avoid smiling to adapt to specific cultural norms.
Of course, these opinions and statements can be seen as unsupported because the distinction between genuine act of smiling and smiling as restored behavior can be subjective and unclear. Just because I’m using the act of smiling as a way of adapting to a specific culture, how can I know that every other person is following the same mindset when smiling? What if someone has a genuinely joyful demeanor and their amiable interactions with other people are not shaped by cultural traditions?
This is once again a question that Schechner answers concisely in his essay by denoting that restored behavior is sometimes esoteric, privy only to the initiated. This statement can be interpreted from different perspectives, and one of them implies that restored behavior is not temporally universal.
The act of smiling can be sincere and brought to existence by natural, physical feeling of happiness, but it can also be used as a restored behavior, one which has become completely independent of its natural source. People will adopt this restored behavior as necessary; when the act of smiling is used to explore or adjust to a specific context, then the behavior can be understood as restored.
In my own life, I also smile when I genuinely feel joyful. In this case, the act of smiling is not a restored behavior because it was brought naturally to existence, and then the actual physical process is understood as an innate, involuntary, muscle-flexing reaction to a state of happiness. On the other hand, when I am smiling to convey my amiable attitude or establish my courtesy to another person, the act of smiling becomes a restored behavior.
In that sense, for any person, the genuine process of smiling and the act of smiling as a restored behavior can be temporally distinguished from each other. Smiling is a genuine behavior when it’s an involuntary physical reaction, but it’s a restored behavior when it is a voluntary or subconscious way of conveying a symbolic message to a person or a group of people.
With that clear framework in mind, the seemingly presumptuous statement that we all perform becomes acceptable. Each and every one of us performs in front of various audiences, from family and friends to acquaintances and strangers, and we engage in this performance act to use a framed and heightened behavior as a way of conveying a specific, symbolic message.
It can certainly sound a bit sinister to think our lives and gestures are “taken over,” as Schechner describes it, but if we just for a moment let go of the notion that everything we do is conscious, the truth becomes obvious. The act of smiling and many other everyday behaviors are indeed restored behaviors, and consequently are also continuous performance acts.
Cover photo is of Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Linda Evangelista,courtesy of Roxanne Lowit.
🕒 This essay is more than 10 years old (Published Sep 24, 2014).
Upon entering my college dorm room, one can see many things and at the same time see nothing. There is an arrangement of album covers on my wall, a set of birthday cards hanging from a poorly drilled-in screw, and a number of photos randomly spaced around the room. A few physical album copies are attached to the wall between posters, a dozen of boarding tickets can be seen on my doors, and there are some train tickets and name tags placed around them.
Everything is rather obvious at first sight. The family photos are there to remind me of my mom, dad, and brother. The train tickets are placed on my doors so that I never forget my trips to Milan, Amsterdam, and Berlin. The birthday cards are there to revive the celebratory emotions when I feel uninspired or unmotivated. But, in reality, there is much greater importance placed in each of these objects that can be felt, heard, and understood only by me.
The album cover of Soap&Skin’s album Lovetune for Vacuum on my wall takes me back to September of 2009, when I heard the song “Cynthia” and felt completely lost and insecure for the first time in my life. The small photo of my grandpa kissing my grandma on the cheek does not sit on my shelf because I simply miss my grandparents, but because I don’t remember my grandpa at all. The miniature stone version of Mostar’s Old Bridge reminds me of the unexplainable fear I felt when my friend gave me this present, before I left for MIT, and told me everything was going to be fine.
The conspicuous disco ball brings back to life the excitement I felt after discovering the world of techno music in a gritty Berlin nightclub. Ballroom Stars Vol. 2, a beautifully designed album by Casa Musica, sits under my lamp and helps me remember the joy of growing up and spending days with my ballroom dance partner.The printed black and white title Četvrtkom u 25 do 9, under a cracked CD case, which translates to Thursdays at 8:35 p.m., restores the unstoppable laughter and feelings of happiness I felt with my friends when we made a year-long, online TV show. The black and white photo of my parents stands next to my window and reminds me of the times when I used to hide under the blanket in our living room and listen to them sing Whitney Houston’s “Saving All My Love for You.”
And then, there is a list in my drawer. This hidden list contains an itemized collection of memories I don’t want to forget but which I did not materialize: seeing Manhattan for the first time, learning how to drive, dancing with my family on 1999 New Year’s Eve, sitting next to a pilot on a flight to San Diego, crying in my mom’s embrace on August 22, 2011, having my first birthday surprise party, saying “I love you” to my friend, sitting on bleach in NYC metro train, dancing salsa with a Cuban music band in a bar, falling asleep during my first opera, getting my first paycheck, and watching my little brother become a teenager.
These objects in my room, and in my life, are much more than a collection of items. They serve a higher purpose; they store something of utmost importance to me—memories. All these memories are manifested in physical form yet their essence is based on emotion, which is the most significant and intangible aspect of memory recollection to me.
There is something beautiful about storing past emotions in present-time objects. Many dislike these kinds of memories because they prevent one from letting go and moving forward, which can certainly be true sometimes, but there can also be a surreal sense of fulfillment when one surrenders to past feelings.
I like to re-experience memories from my past because, even though they invoke the same emotions, they provide a fresh perspective on previous events. They allow me to see how much I’ve changed—for better or for worse—and give me a sense of reference when I feel indecisive.
Most importantly, though, they let me keep track of all the people and events that entered my life, influenced my way of thinking, and found their places in my mind and in my heart.
🕒 This article is more than 10 years old (Published Oct 4, 2013).
This article won 1st prize Collegiate Gold Circle Award in Entertainment Reviews (Category N14), awarded by Columbia Scholastic Press Association in 2014.
For the Los Angeles-based experimental musician Julia Holter, having creative blocks and receiving only sporadic artistic epiphanies does not seem to be an option. Her debut album Tragedy was released in 2011, immediately accompanied by the sophomore follow-up Ekstasis in 2012 and the third full-length album Loud City Song released this year. Keeping in mind that many critically acclaimed contemporary musicians take more than a few years between releasing their albums, it might be tempting to assume that Holter prefers quantity over quality. Yet, at only twenty-eight years of age, Holter — a musically-trained CalArts alumna — delivers stronger and richer material with each subsequent album.
Her first two albums were recorded solo and were based on distinct concepts. Taking inspiration from literature and timeless stories such as certain Greek tragedies, Holter incorporated layers of her own tales and observations into a successful experimentation of hazy electronic, atmospheric, and soothing music. While some of these attempts, such as the track “Marienbad” from Ekstasis, manage to showcase Holter at the peak of her creativity, her artistic core did not emerge to its full glory until her newest album Loud City Song.
This artistic progress did not happen on its own, but was accompanied by some notable changes — the album was recorded with a music ensemble, its core themes were not united by historical stories (although the album was partially inspired by the film “Gigi”), and the electronic sounds were largely replaced by lush and varied instrumentation. Ironically, even with the lack of a central and uniting theme, Loud City Song turns out to be Holter’s most structured work.
Thematically, Holter once again builds the levels of the story by drawing references to her own life, but this time to non-imaginary tales that revolve around seemingly everyday topics, such as intimacy, rights to privacy, anxiety, relationships, and freedom. For an L.A. native, where the everyday motions of regular people go unnoticed, yet there is pressing scrutiny of celebrities, the concepts of solitude and privacy have a particularly relevant meaning.
The album’s two complementary tracks, “Maxim’s I” and “Maxim’s II,” reflect each other musically and both address this topic through their shared opening lines: “Tonight the birds are watching me / Do they have more important things to do?” To add in an extra sense of the agonizing pressure of the showbiz society, Holter opens “Horns Surrounding Me” with the sounds of someone running, breathing heavily and whispering during an escape for freedom, just before the pounding sounds of heavy bass and frantic horns surround Holter’s echoing voice while she shrills the three words of the track’s name.
Musically, Holter maximizes the presence of the music ensemble and unites her characteristic experimental flavor with traditional orchestral instruments. “In the Green Wild” opens with a rhythm-driving pizzicato (while Holter swirls her lyrics with occasional vocal inserts “wah wah!”) and closes with an iterative and haunting celestial tune in the background as she sings in a high-pitch tone: “hah ah hah.”
One of Holter’s most ambitious tracks, a cover of Barbara Lewis’s song “Hello Stranger,” balances the album halfway through by driving the first few musically-dense tracks into a 6-minute long minimalistic ambient experimentation. The 1963 hit single, known as the catchy rhythmical oldie driven by the back-up vocals singing “shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby,” becomes a dreamy state of a peaceful purgatory with the sound of seagulls in the background, and Holter’s fainting voice whispering “Hello, stranger / It seems so good to see you back again.” The album’s most upbeat track, the light-jazzy and slow-jam “This Is a True Heart,” colors the album with enough foreign sounds (if you listen very carefully, you’ll notice a subtle and perhaps accidental sound of Balkan folk in the opening horns), but gives that necessary kick of dance rhythm that completes the album’s essence.
Holter’s music is certainly experimental, but it is far from being unsafe and boldly risky. Yet, there is something interesting about the way she explores the spaces of the known — whether it’s doing a cover of a 1963 track or simply recording someone running. She knows how to deliver the unexplored and unknown of these commonplace ideas and fully involve the listener. All of this serves to prove that Holter is an unquestionable avant-garde artist and that her newest album is an excellent piece of work.
And, most importantly, Loud City Song is not the kind of album that can be played just to sing along to two or three tracks on repeat. It requires full attention, dedication and willingness to surrender to the complex and beautifully-layered musical composition. Every track on this album serves a purpose and brings a unique flavor to Holter’s captivating storytelling. If you decide to allow Holter to guide you through a landscape of strings, horns, bass and celestial vocals, you will find yourself internalizing her memories and experiencing a world that you’ve never seen or felt before. At the same time, when the album ends with the lulling “City Appearing,” Holter’s voice will leave you with the most intriguing feeling of déjà vu and you will be pleading to hear more.
Highlight tracks: “Horns Surrounding Me,” “In the Green Wild,” “Maxim’s II,” “This Is a True Heart,” “Hello Stranger.”
Originally published in MIT’s newspaper “The Tech.”
🕒 This article is more than 10 years old (Published Sep 20, 2013).
“Also, I wanna say The Droid Control can kiss the rust of the left and the right cheek of my black metal ass,” says the voice of a female caller during a radio call in Monáe’s interlude “Good Morning Midnight.” The radio station WDRD, led by DJ Crash Crash, receives comments and thoughts from various callers, who discuss their opinions on Monáe’s heroine alter-ego, android Cindi Mayweather.
Monáe’s longtime fans have been following the heartbreaking story of the fugitive android ever since she introduced Cindi’s character on her widely unknown debut album, The Audition. The actual narrative fully formed its flow on her conceptual EP Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). It told the story of android 57821, otherwise known as Cindi Mayweather, who fell in love with a human named Anthony Greendown.
Ostracized by the droid community, Cindi was labeled top android fugitive and prime target for The Droid Control’s bounty hunters. The tale continued throughout Monáe’s widely-acclaimed and highly eclectic full-length album The ArchAndroid, which ended with a climactic 8-minute orchestral piece “BaBopByeYa”. With the song’s final verses, “my freedom calls and I must go,” and Cindi’s narrative flashbacks of Anthony Greendown, the listeners were left wondering what the next chapter of the forbidden-love saga would entail.
Three years later, Monáe is back with a 19-track sequel entitled The Electric Lady. The new album takes a slight detour from the usual storyline and puts the spotlight on Monáe’s pre-android storyline and R&B-heavy melodies. Most of the android-inspired themes are told throughout the album’s three radio interludes, which do not reveal much about the latest details of Cindi’s destiny. Instead, they focus on the population’s support and rejection of her lifestyle.
The diverse musical styles from The ArchAndroid, ranging from pop and rock to hip-hop and orchestral, exist only in subtle nuances on the new album. Suite IV and V Overtures still bring a reminiscent sound of The Electric Lady’s predecessor, but none of the songs reach the spectacular emotional quality of songs like “BabopbyeYa.” The lack of cohesive storyline, which became Monáe’s trademark, and the more homogenous musical style leave the album bereft of the final touch of Monáe-esque brilliance.
However, brilliance is a relative concept when it comes to Janelle Monáe. A less audacious album in her sphere of artistry is still an inspiring and defining album in the sphere of the wider music industry. The converged and R&B-centered musical style of The Electric Lady sounds indisputably refreshing and novel when Prince joins Monáe in “Givin ‘Em What They Love,” one of the album’s stand-out old-school tracks; or when Monáe and Miguel together tackle the album’s down-tempo and hypnotic love ballad “Primetime.”
The album’s eponymous track, a collaboration between Monáe and Solange Knowles, brings out the old spirit of Janelle Monáe, in a song filled with dance beats, brass instruments and infectiously catchy lyrics. Big-name collaborations do not end there – Esperanza Spalding and Monáe thrive together in the jazzy lounge track “Dorothy Dandridge Eyes,” and Erykah Badu contributes her vocals in “Q.U.E.E.N.” While Monáe brings her traditional fusion of psychedelic nostalgia and funk elements in upbeat songs like “We Were Rock & Roll,” she also delivers a fantastic performance in more mellow, soul-inspired tracks like “Can’t Live Without Your Love” and “Look Into My Eyes.”
The development of the android-inspired saga remains unclear as Monáe wraps her lyrics with a layer of ambiguity and brings in more references to her personal life. However, when she steps in “Ghetto Woman,” rapping “before the tuxedos and black and white every day / I used to watch my momma get down on her knees and pray,” or when she delivers the numbing rap sequence in the last part of “Q.U.E.E.N”, one must admit that Monáe is still as fantastic as ever, even if her efforts are no longer primarily focused on fictional and unusual themes.
Just before the radio conversation in “Good Morning Midnight” ends, the unknown female caller informs DJ Crash Crash that “[they] gonna take to the club tonight and break some rules in honor of Cin-di!” Thrilled and excited, DJ Crash Crash asks the female caller which rules they are going to break.
“We gonna break all of them”, replies the caller.
Monáe’s new album might be thematically less ambitious and musically less inclusive than her previous efforts, but less does not mean worse. The Electric Lady is different, equally inspirational and the best indicator of an undeniable truth – Monáe still knows how to break all the rules.
Highlight tracks: “Givin ‘Em What They Love” ft. Prince, “We Were Rock & Roll”, “What an Experience”, “Can’t Live Without Your Love”, “Electric Lady” ft. Solange, “Ghetto Woman.”
Originally published in MIT’s newspaper “The Tech.”
🕒 This article is more than 10 years old (Published Apr 19, 2013).
This article won 1st prize Collegiate Gold Circle Award in Entertainment Reviews (Category N14), awarded by Columbia Scholastic Press Association in 2013.
If this is the first time you hear the oddly concatenated name iamamiwhoami, then you have missed the fascinating beginnings of an enigmatic viral internet sensation that took over Youtube in 2009.
Founded by the Swedish folk singer-songwriter Jonna Lee, her producer Claes Björklund and the film director Robin Kempe-Bergman, iamamiwhoami is an audiovisual musical project with many charming peculiarities that your regular wannabe-weirdo artists never manage to deliver.
In case you are a tough nut when it comes to newcomers in the music industry, you might be reluctant to believe that there is anything remotely interesting about iamamiwhoami, but you might think differently when you find out that until late 2010, fans across the world had no idea who their new favorite synth- and dream-pop star was.
In other words, iamamiwhoami started as a completely anonymous and puzzling Youtube project that spread out virally and remained incognito for almost an entire year.
It all started when numerically titled videos were uploaded to iamamiwhoami’s Youtube account and emailed to various music journalists. These initial videos were very short and portrayed oddly-decorated forests, eerie synth beats, snowy graveyards, human-tree hybrids and, most importantly, a mysterious woman completely painted in black, with her eyes shining distinctly under overly extended eyelashes.
The pattern continued until a full-length video titled “b” was released in March 2010, which was the first concrete beginning of a mesmerizing tale. What was the tale? Funnily enough, it’s hard to tell. After “b”, new one-letter videos were released in a non-random order: “o”, “u-1”, “u-2”, “n”, “t”, “y”, which eventually spelled out the word “bounty”.
Each video was very unique and had its own story, but they all had some recurring features, which included a black cat, the female protagonist’s loose dance moves, fairy tale forests, ethereal surroundings, half-naked people, and semen.
For instance, in “t”, the female protagonist dances completely naked on a cliff singing about new beginnings, while in “y” she frolics around a foil-covered forest guarded by trees with half-naked people inside them.
The mystery was partially shattered when “t” was released — it became clear that Jonna Lee was involved in the project because her face was unveiled for the first time, and all the media’s speculations of Lady Gaga or Christina Aguilera being involved fell into oblivion. In the summer of 2011, iamamiwhoami released two singles “; john” and “clump”, which were the last two tracks to be included on bounty.
Instead of releasing bounty as their debut LP, they decided to first release a completely different album titled kin, which contains singles unrelated to the bounty storyline and notably less entertaining videos that were released sequentially in 2012. While the album was well-received by the critics, it lacked the substance that bounty will surely showcase when it is released in June.
Of course, iamamiwhoami is not all about otherworldly videos and enchanting storylines — their music is equally captivating. “b” and “u-1” are the only mediocre singles on bounty; the rest of the tracks are superb and entrancing dance songs that prove iamamiwhoami’s creativity not only in the sphere of visual artistry, but in that of acoustics as well. “u-2” sounds like an ecstatic heavy-beat Crystal Castles anthem, “n” is a hypnotizing pop lullaby, and the last one-letter single “y” is an amalgam of nostalgia, mischievousness, disco rhythms and Jonna Lee’s innocent voice that define this single as a covert evergreen.
Musically, bounty easily achieves what many mainstream albums fail to do — it makes dance music intelligible and artistic.
Only time can tell how iamamiwhoami will develop and if it will ever become a timeless piece of culture, but bounty will surely be remembered as an internet treasure that won the hearts of many people across the world. Even though the charm that these singles had when they appeared online will wear off when they are released together as a physical album, they will always remain as riddling dance tunes that define their own dimension of weirdness.
After all, how often do you see a video of a woman lying in veggies telling you to “sharpen your knives and clean plates for some tender?”
Originally published in MIT’s newspaper “The Tech.”
