Wet panties, grieving fans: from Shawn Mendes to the Beatles to Justin Bieber, being appreciated by women would be an indecisive defect for musicians of all stripes.
The solo male artist of the year 2020, according to the magazine GQ, in the United States, is called Shawn Mendes: as Ed Sheeran or Justin Bieber before him, this 22-year-old Canadian is paying the price of a poisoned gift for the industry, arousing the enthusiasm of very young girls. Former boy band members have also been the subject of derogatory jokes and worked to extricate themselves from this infamous repertoire, such as Justin Timberlake, ex of the group NSYNC or Harry Styles, survivor of One Direction. The phenomenon does not date from yesterday: in France, the late Christophe, who once unleashed crowds with his single Aline, did everything to emancipate himself from it. No offense to aficionados, “the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach boys, Michael Jackson, Prince and even David Bowie in his early days, what are they originally, if not kinky singers?”, Asks Basile Farkas, deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine. Rock & Folk. Why so much hatred?
Mindless vs music lovers
Let’s rewind: at the turn of the 20th century, the term “minette”, which evokes both a harmless kitten and iron ore in Lorraine, is a synonym for “midinette”. Contraction of “midday” and “dinette”, the word indicates that which makes, at the time, a small meal at midday. A category of the population suspected of light morals: “They are mainly seamstresses, young single women and employees who like to have fun”, Explains Marie Buscatto, sociologist of genre and music at the University of Paris 1. Minette * or midinette, the term has remained, now opposing brainless, on the one hand, and learned music lovers on the other.
“Culture produces boys who make you dream and young women in turn fantasize about these handsome men.”
Until the Thirty Glorious Years, which marked the end of the war with fanfare: the emergence of a new adolescent market was part of the boom in pop music and mass culture, as the current shows here. yéyé and her sauerkraut muse, Cloclo. “Since Elvis Presley, it has been a iron law of pop music to please children and displease parents who find it stupid or shocking.”, Contextualizes Basile Farkas. The rise of pop is concomitant with a liberation of mores which accompanies the birth of a more feminine and emancipated public: “it is a pivotal moment, the culture produces boys who make you dream and young women in return fantasize these attractive men. Elvis also had problems with the censorship, we considered him too erotic”, Specifies Marie Buscatto. To have (finally!) The right to express oneself by shouting in unison in public, even to fall into a swoon: we especially remember the media staging of this female body mechanics, the shameless exhibition of a passion devouring. The Beatlemaniaques, known as “knicker-wetting”, thus remain associated in the minds of the wetting of panties: “In archive footage from a concert at Shea Stadium [de New York en 1965], you don’t even hear the Beatles. They had to build more powerful amps because the noise from the crowd was incredible”, Specifies Basile Farkas.
Depreciation mechanism
Commercial blessing, being adored by women nevertheless arouses opprobrium: “Classically, when we want to delegitimize an art, an activity or a person, placing them on the feminine side is an effective way to devalue them. We would thus be fragile, passive, frivolous or syrupy. As if virtuosity, genius and deep expression did not combine in the feminine”, Explains Marie Buscatto. Deemed unworthy, the setting to music of feelings is accused of sentimentality and sentimentality. This depreciation mechanism aims, through the intermediary of the public who praise them (wrongly), the quality of musical productions. “The aesthetic judgment is made from the definition by the public, often very young girls who dream thanks to the songs. Behind this objective character, there is a devaluation: such a singer would not be a real artist, he does not have a real voice, what he says has no interest and his music is reduced to three chords.”, Remarks Marie Buscatto. The old boy bands of the 60s, Stones and Beatles included, were thus showered with praise late in the day, when fine male connoisseurs put their stamp on them.
A contempt that also originates in a sexist history of the culture of fans and groupies: relations of power and promiscuity to which the film testifies Almost famous by Cameron Crowe (2000), or the memoirs of Pamela Des Barres, fervent support of the most shaggy rockers in California. Long monstrous figures of pathological alienation, according to the researcher Christian le Bart, their contribution is now giving rise to a late reassessment: for Hannah Ewens, author of FANGIRLS: Scenes from Modern Music Culture, the “fangirls” considered “hysterical” would in reality be depositaries of a real expertise.
Clementine Gallot
* Not to be confused with the twinks or golden jackets, fashionable wicks who roam the Drugstore, on the Champs-Elysées in the sixties.
– .
