We’ve been dancing to this song in class lately…and now it’s stuck in my head. Analysis/connections to follow.
Disturbia, in no particular order:
1. Disturbed Sleep
I’ve been having bad dreams lately. I wake up in a contorted knot of tensed muscle, bedding, and throbbing headaches. I’ve had some really upsetting interactions with a past love and while I managed to stop crying in my waking hours, it continues to consume the landscape of my dreams–There he yells at me and ignores me. He hits me and demeans me. So I wake up feeling sick about things that never fully happened and things I can’t talk to him about. I hope this disturbia leaves me soon…
2. Dancing, Disturbed
I want to make a dance about mental illness. There is so much rich material for this…and it would be very compelling because I think everybody has had a moment of feeling a massive disconnect between their mind, their soul, and their body. Dancing is also very psychological, despite being extremely physically demanding. I’d like to play with that. If only I actually choreographed dances…
My dancing has also been disturbed of late– by my knee. I think it’s a recurrence of patellar tendinitis from a streak of really intense rehearsals and training last weekend. It’s being unresponsive to ice, and I’m hoping that taking a long weekend off from dance with help it recover.
3. Rihanna
Is ridiculously good looking.* She is disturbingly attractive–it’s almost startling, those piercing green eyes set off against her black hair and golden brown skin. Also, I want her haircut. I really respect her willingness to cut off her lengthy locks when so much of black women pop stars’ sex appeal comes from their volumes of long straight or ringleted hair…Then again, anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows I have a weakness for women with short hair. So sexy.
4. Media Studies Mini Moment-Disturbia
How did mental illness get conflated with people of color, BDSM, and lots of black eyeshadow? While this music video is visually stunning–I’m curious about the choices Rihanna/the director made in representing a disturbed mind state. Namely, that mental distress is visually equated with physical “freakishness”. And by “freakishness,” that is anything outside of the white norm–be it race, sexuality, or abilty. All of these parties stand in the space of the music video as visual markers of “disturbia”–they are each represented as somehow disturbed, deformed, or perverted.
5. The US Economy aka Disturbia
Is anybody else seriously disturbed by the state of economy? Banks are failing, foreclosures are as common as as junk mail in your inbox, and there are too few jobs, most with rapidly srinking salaries. Suburbia is quickly sliding into Disturbia. I’m trying to get stable enough so that I can put my financial head down and try to weather an increasingly bleak future. Don’t even get me started on what might happen if the Republicans win the election this fall. I’m not the only one with this foreboding future on my mind-Eve Ensler weighs in on Palin.
I was talking to one of my mentors yesterday and it was the strangest thing to hear… She basically said, “Yes. Job hunting is completely demeaning and demoralizing. And you will get rejected again and again and again. But you have to know that your are qualified, and that your are looking for a very specific thing that has to be available and then you have to be the right match.” Great. I’m signing myself up to be un/under-employed and demoralized on a daily basis. hmph.
I think that is a sufficient overview of the many facets of disturbia on/in my mind. As always, more to come.
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*I’m sure LCV will agree with me.
