Janelle Monae has intertwined
many different metaphors and underlying meanings into her album titled “Metropolis,”
making it rich and entertaining story. The
narrative of this album follows an android named Cindy Mayweather, also known
as 57821, and the consequences of her forbidden love for a human. Within the songs there is mention of robots, cyborgs,
being underground, love, struggle, the rich, the poor, etc., but the connection
of all these references have to each other and to 57821, may not be initially clear
unless the listener understands some of the references and allusions that Monae
makes toward outside works. Ignoring these
references for the moment and taking her music for face value, as a listener, I
am wooed by Monae tale of inexorable desire for the forbidden. This rhetorical appeal of pathos is not explicitly
for love but is reminiscent for any experience where I have wanted something badly
and I could not obtain it. This broad
and widely appealing rhetoric gives the album some elements of a pop album but
since there is so much more to her album it would be in accurate to say that
pop is anything more than a small influence.
The reason
that the genre of pop was not the focus of Monae’s album is because it is not
meant to be taken at face value. The deeper
meaning of her album is related to all the different themes and topics
mentioned in the album that I talked about earlier. While they seem disjointed and unrelated when
taken at face value but they are unified and given context when seen through
the lens of Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie, Metropolis. If you know the movie it is not hard to see the
plentiful references that Monae makes to the movie, the problem is that this
movie is not well known in today’s movie culture, so people listening to the
album may not pick up on the reference and not receive the full, intended narrative
of the album. Interestingly enough both the movie and the
album received high ratings and praise from critics. On IMDb he movie has a rating of 8.4 out of
10 based on user voting (this is well above the average rating, highest rating
being 9.3) and it is the 89th highest rated movie of all time based
on IMBd’s rating system. Also, Ben
Borneman reviewed Monae’s album and praised the creativity, ingenuity and thought
she put in this album as well as her entertaining and upbeat rhythm, with a
voice to back it up. But didn’t either
of these pieces of work achieve widespread popularity. The reason I believe that they didn’t is
because both piece aim for a specific audience. The both use the appeal of ethos to show that
they are very in tune with a very specific genre (i.e. sci-fi and certain
sociopolitical issues), which garners strong support from that specific group
but only that group.
Sources:
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/39522/Janelle-Monae-Metropolis-Suite-I-of-IV%3A-The-Chase/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl
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