Pop music exists solely for the purpose of giving you that sugar rush, fizzy feeling only soda bubbles can provide. Of course, on closer inspection, the songs in this genre tend toward the flat, syrupy nonsense that signals it's time to crack open another 2-liter. Luckily, the Shallow End is here to lap up the dregs.
For all their differences, the two Louis XIV's that will go down in my history book (yeah, I'm writing one — professional baseball ends in 1985) actually have a lot in common. Sure, there's the discrepancy between their periods of relevance. The French monarch was in power for 72 years, while the San Diego-based rockers were a blip on the modern rock dial for roughly 72 hours. The king waged a war against Protestants, while the band focused their efforts on good musical taste (zing!). The king rested his head at the luxurious Palace of Versailles, while I can only suspect the band snoozed on a tour bus amid a group of squealing groupies. I mean, that's what Almost Famous taught me.
But perhaps the greatest congruency between the two is their inherent treatment of women as objects. This has become a central theme of the Inexplicably Close Look in our examinations so far, and in fact thinking about Louis XIV's semi-hit from 2005, "Finding Out True Love is Blind," I saw a clear cultural path from pop songs of days past.
The song provided some controversy when, in 2005, mega-school Hoover High in Alabama (that place where MTV filmed their high school football tell-all) banned the quartet from playing a gig under their roof. The reason? Promoting hedonism and rowdiness, with more than a hint of racism in the lyrics. Shallow End reports, you decide:
Ah chocolate girl, well you're looking like something I want
Ah and your little Asian friend well, well she can come if she wants
I want all the self conscious girls who try to hide who they are with makeup
You know it’s the girl with a frown with the tight pants I really want to shake up
OK, OK, ee cummings this is not. Let's also put aside the mildly amusing fact that a man wearing eyeshadow is crooning about picking a woman out of a glorified police lineup (everyone has their moment of "The Cure" weakness, I suppose). Is it racist?
Our dramatic voice in this song is soliciting a "chocolate girl." We can assume he doesn't mean the Hershey variety. And he clearly wants to friend-zone the "little Asian friend," perhaps she's coming along to carry the long train of garments Louis XIV was known to wear. There may be nothing sexual at all about the ditty. The last two lines clearly suggest this guy has something other than skin color on his mind, though. And that's getting with women who are insecure about themselves and perhaps one who will put up a bit of a fight in the process. Racist? Probably not. Morally reprehensible? You decide that one.
Really, we shouldn't fault Louis XIV though. I mean, "Finding Out True Love is Blind" is just an extension of the path we've been on since the Beach Boys' "California Girls" to Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Yes, I did just mention those...shudder...artists in the same sentence (Bega, you owe me a beer for that last remark — that is, if those royalty checks from 1999 are still rolling in. If not, I'll take a rain check). For a band so keen on invoking history, it's only fair we afford them the misogynistic context they so rightfully deserve.
(Let's be fair to the Beach Boys, who were singing in a different time and place in our culture. But if one need see evidence of how far the "California Girls" conceit can be taken to the male-dominated extreme in our current culture of sexual dynamics, look — if you dare — no further than David Lee Roth's update.)
Let's not carry this too far, though. I mean, Louis XIV the band is merely singing to a generation of girls who are being told that their idols objectify the female form, while Louis XIV the man actually seduced mistresses in addition to his wife, who bore him six children. In between all that purging the continent of Protestants stuff and setting in place the contempt of authority that ultimately spurred the French Revolution.
The affront on your eardrums (and your liberal-minded tendencies) will have to make the call about which was more detrimental to mankind. Or maybe you'd rather spend time thinking about something more productive, like I should have been doing.
