You know how we’re all waiting for a TV show starring Alison Brie, Peter Dinklage, Nathan Fillion, the dog from The Artist, Jean-Ralphio, and Lizzy Caplan, right? How excited we’d be for that? Well, this is kind of like that, but the exact opposite: “Straight Up Blog Post on Lana Del Rey” by Whitney Cummings.
Lana Del Rey, as you may know if you’ve visited the Internet these past few days, was the musical guest on last weekend’s “SNL.” It was a disaster, and likely did more harm than good to Del Rey’s career. So of course Whitney came to her defense on her “Princess Complex” Tumblr, by blaming everyone but Del Rey for her “very drunk-at-a-wedding-and-gonna-regret-it-in-the-morning-type” performance. Let’s go through it:
It’s a little troubling that when a young girl fails at something that we keep kicking her why she is down.
Isn’t it pandering to call a 25-year-old woman a “young girl”?
I get very protective of girls, especially young performers, because they live a hard, emotionally challenging, often physically challenging life where you are constantly given reasons to be insecure and have panic attacks.
EVERY girl has a traumatic upbringing, according to Whitney, and that’s why we should only have nice things to say about them. “That was a great performance, Lana — here’s a lollipop.” If I were a female, I’d find that assumption insulting. She only singles out “girls,” too, because Michael Jackson had an AMAZING childhood.
I totally get the stuff about her not deserving to be there and I don’t mean to insult musicians in any way if that’s how they feel obviously, but this is an opportunity to show us how hard being a performer is so maybe they can all be cut some slack.
We’re not watching “SNL” to watch the eternal struggle that is the life of a performer – we watch because we want to be entertained. That’s why it’s called “entertainment,” not “lookhowtoughourlivesaretainment.” © Whitney Cummings, Inc.
I think we take our performers for granted. It’s super fu*king hard to entertain people and it takes a lot of work.
“WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LOVE MY SHOW???” I hate that she does that manipulative thing where she’s among the “we.” Obviously Whitney isn’t a performer. She’s just a regular Jane Q. Tampon, just like you and me.
[Performing] takes a long time to get good, and even when you are good, you can be challenged by new venues and being televised, and cameras, and the uh…fear and terror of being slammed by critics and bloggers.
THEN DON’T BECOME A PERFORMER. The best thing that can happen to a new artist IS getting onto a nationally televised show, where millions of people will watch you, and hopefully of those millions, thousands will write then about you. If you’re afraid of that, then performing isn’t for you. None of that woe-the-talented-few bull.
Something about this girl brings out the petty in us. Her quick rise? Her pretty face? Something is pissing people off about this girl and I just think it’s an opportunity for us to learn from ourselves and grow. (LOOK AT HOW MUCH OF AN ADULT I AM NOW!)
I’m not mad about her “SNL” appearance because she’s pretty; I’m irritated at the breaks she’s been getting BECAUSE she’s pretty that other, much better performers haven’t gotten (she’s also said that music isn’t her true passion). For instance, LCD Soundsystem is one of the best bands from the past decade, and last week, someone (possibly frontman James Murphy) wrote on their label’s Twitter, “Lana Del Rey plays Saturday Night Live next week. LCD Soundsystem tried for 6 years to play [SNL]. Isn’t ‘too soon’ ok advice?” It is, but:
Let’s not blame her, let’s blame her managers for not making her wait until they knew she would not get nervous or kick it out of the park or not do whatever happened.
Damn them for doing their jobs really well!
I just think whether someone sucks or someone doesn’t we should be kinder to them. So whether or not Lana sucked, I think we should be encouraging and patient. Other peoples success doesn’t fu*k up our lives and other people failures should not brighten them.
“GUYS, season two of “Whitney” is going to be SO good. Just you wait, haters.”
Love You,
W
