A Scottish women’s charity said Carpenter’s new album cover evokes “tired tropes” of women being “possessions,” while fans have defended her cover as satirical commentary on sexism.
This is accurate. People misunderstand art because it requires cultural literacy, and most people are partially to completely culturally illiterate, because we live in a time of the massive fracturing of mass market culture.
This includes myself. Perhaps it is satirical, perhaps it is sincere, perhaps it is good art, perhaps it is bad art. I wouldn’t know, I am not the targeted demographic.
Hell, having been a Charlie xcx fan for years since her collaborations with the PC Music label (RIP) I thought ‘brat’ on release as mostly just a very well produced semi-self aware pop party album, a decent in-between of her best (imo) and most experimental pop album ‘How I’m Feeling Now’ (which was also one of her worst selling) and her more return to form of ‘Crash’ but then she went and attempted to turn it into a feminist political vehicle, and now she is attempting to keep pressing on the whole ‘brat’ concept and even going so far as to rebrand many of her previous albums in that light, which is hella weird and a bad move imo, because none of her earlier albums exhibit those characteristics. If I can’t even be truly media literate in the messaging of an artist I have been following for years, I have absolutely no chance with someone like Sabrina Carpenter.
This is accurate. People misunderstand art because it requires cultural literacy, and most people are partially to completely culturally illiterate, because we live in a time of the massive fracturing of mass market culture.
This includes myself. Perhaps it is satirical, perhaps it is sincere, perhaps it is good art, perhaps it is bad art. I wouldn’t know, I am not the targeted demographic.
Hell, having been a Charlie xcx fan for years since her collaborations with the PC Music label (RIP) I thought ‘brat’ on release as mostly just a very well produced semi-self aware pop party album, a decent in-between of her best (imo) and most experimental pop album ‘How I’m Feeling Now’ (which was also one of her worst selling) and her more return to form of ‘Crash’ but then she went and attempted to turn it into a feminist political vehicle, and now she is attempting to keep pressing on the whole ‘brat’ concept and even going so far as to rebrand many of her previous albums in that light, which is hella weird and a bad move imo, because none of her earlier albums exhibit those characteristics. If I can’t even be truly media literate in the messaging of an artist I have been following for years, I have absolutely no chance with someone like Sabrina Carpenter.