NOTES on #11
This poem connects with The Muppet Show episode guest starring Candice Bergen. She was a fashion model and a famous actress, perhaps most well known for her later work on Murphy Brown. This poem is about the way the Hollywood industry sells a certain portrayal of women within the American machine. It's also about hogging the spotlight away from education in order to create a culture obsessed with sex, beauty, fame, greed, and hamming it up.
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| "Pig Before a Mirror" / parody of Picasso's |
& I chose to self-publish this piece because I know it won't get picked up anywhere else. It is perhaps a bit overdone, but let's go through it together. In this episode, the diva of The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy, has her very first opening number! Before her rise to fame, Miss Piggy was just a simple farm pig. She actually knows very few French words but likes to pretend she speaks the language as she finds it to be refined and romantic. For this poem I tried to create an OULIPO, or like Miss Piggy, at least what I thought is one. An OULIPO is a type of poem that originated by French writers that uses writing constraints. The constraints I created are a bit puzzling. The general constraint was to answer a question using a longer more enigmatic answer other than a direct answer. The first question I answered three different ways. The first was to use a word in each line with a letter that starts the word and is repeated twice after. That letter of the word would spell an answer going down (POOR GIRL). The second way is even more complicated because the answer plays off the first as a rhyme to the answer, poor girl. You have to find a synonym for the word in italics, which are both vulgar slang words("whore" and "hurl"). The third way is by using two types of definitions, and then from there, end with misleading facts. This condensing of content relates to the UK spot in this episode, "It's Not Where You Start." WAKE UP is in capital letters inside the entire piece. This poem is definitely overly conceptual, but I believe the lines alone tell their own story.
& Perhaps because of its headiness, I decided to make a music video to compliment this piece. My dear friend, Ara Christina Jo, is the star of this video. She was tragically taken from us too soon, but I know her spirit lives on. I was very lucky to have such an angel as a friend. Whatever you think of my artistic social commentary, I hope her humor and beauty shines through this small window. She is missed by many.