Song of the Moment: Die Young - Ke$ha

I have a confession to make:

I really like Ke$ha. Like, I listen to her songs, unironically, for fun. I'm... I'm not even sorry.

Ke$ha, I think, is cleverer than people give her credit for; look at how self-aware the Tik Tok video is (beat up cars, back-alley parties, a guy who doesn't exactly look like Mick Jagger). This one is almost frighteningly intense in its portrayal of party culture (notably the shouted repetition of "We're gonna die young"; the full line includes a like before it, but then she shouts as direct fact that "we are GOING to die young"). The video takes it in a really interesting direction, with ridiculously strong religious/occult/illuminati imagery. She's being incredibly in-your-face and it gets almost uncomfortable to watch at times, notably the group of people being directly compared to a pack of wolves in heat. The video is so intense, but it also takes itself 100% seriously. Coming from the same person as the "kittens and fursuits" C'Mon video, it's clearly self-aware and intentional, but it still sits just this side of literal insanity.

I've been thinking recently about character and caricature; particularly, reading comic books in general and the Justice League and Batman family specifically, the ways that amplifying certain aspects of a character make them more interesting. Batman is almost a caricature sometimes: DESTROY evil, PUNCH bad guys, NO killing, NO mercy, MY PARENTS ARE DEEEEEEEEAD. But...almost a caricature. There's enough depth that shines through that he feels like an extreme person rather than a one-dimensional character. It's when he's teetering on the edge of absurdity that he's at his best. Superman almost addresses it from the other end, where he usually wallows in boring "I'm a good guy and I can do anything I want" caricature, but sometimes, sometimes, he gains just enough humanity that it throws the whole rest of his character into stark relief. Where Batman slides from "interesting" to "awesome" to "dumb" as he gets more intense, Superman starts at "dumb," but just sometimes manages to lean back over the cliff to "awesome."

 Not this cliff.

In the same way, Ke$ha is very nearly a parody of herself, but the key is very nearly. This parody is really interesting because it almost seems like Ke$ha would watch it and say "Yes. That is exactly right." She is very directly, intentionally, and knowingly (portraying herself as) living as a sort of "party culture paragon." She is the extreme of what a party-all-night-and-forget-about-tomorrow twenty-something dreams of being. She isn't a rich rapper droppin' stacks and singing about how awesome she is, she's young and broke and singing about how much fun(?) she's having.
Compare with TI's Whatever You Like on the one end, where the singer has everything he could possibly want, and in fact has so much that he can give another person whatever she could possibly want, as well (so long as he continues to "want [her] body / need [her] body," but that's another issue).

Actually a much more believable superhero

So where does that put Ke$ha? If TI (and other "I'm irrelevantly rich") rappers are too-extreme Superman, where's "near-suicidal partying"?

Let's pick another artist in the middle; Lady Gaga, say. I think she makes sense as Batman: dark and interesting, taking all the bizareness of her world completely seriously and embracing her image. Also she wants to "marry the night", which Bruce totally would if it were legal in Gotham. Gaga's also a good choice for a middle-interesting because she's sort of a less-intense version of Ke$ha. She likes dancing and partying, but seems more tame.

Batman.

If Lady Gaga is Batman in the world of pop stars, we need a more intense, "whoa, buddy, ease up there" version to represent Ke$ha:

Jason Todd.

If you're not well-versed in minor Batman characters, Jason Todd was the second Robin, after Dick Grayson "aged out" and became Nightwing. Bruce caught him trying to steal the hubcaps from the Batmobile and decided he liked his moxy (and would rather have him fight the good fight than end up as some villain's minion), so he made him Robin.

Jason Todd was also a complete asshole. He was a terrible Robin and a jerk and nobody liked him. In fact, nobody liked him so much that DC did a reader poll (via two 900 numbers that readers could call as many times as they liked) on whether or not they should kill Jason Todd. The votes came in 55-45 for "end him," and in the "Death in the Family" storyline, the Joker beat him to death with a crowbar.

In this metaphor, the Joker is... Taylor Swift? I'm not sure, I've lost track.

It's actually a really horrifying scene, and it became really important for Batman (he kept Jason's Robin outfit in a glass case in the Batcave, and he flashes back to his death every time he gets Scarecrow'd. The Knightfall storyline, where Bane shows up and breaks the bat, goes into this).

Anyway, later on some weird fate manipulation made Jason Todd not be dead anymore, and he came back and got Batman-style roam-the-world-seeking-out-experts training in various ways to hurt people. The difference is, he didn't care about killing. He came back as Red Hood, a vigilante with all of Batman's ability and none of his morals, intent on wiping out crime via bullets to faces. (When the New 52 came along, he got a really mediocre title where they take away a lot of his intensity and consequently make him a lot less interesting, but let's try to think about that as little as possible.)

And that's Ke$ha: she's Jason Todd, the Red Hood. Frighteningly intense, just on the edge of being unbelievably extreme, but teetering back into crazy awesome. 

Though sometimes she's just regular crazy.

Bonus Round: Comments!

 I love how seriously all the commenters take the video. There are the angry ones, of course:
"And people say Lady Gaga is praising illuminati, look at this girl, all i [sic] see is the eye and triangles flying around like its a BBQ." 
 "SSS (Triple S): Stupid Satanic Slut."

And the counters:
"LOL all the people upset about the illuminati symbols youshouldno [sic] she is trolling you. It is suppose [sic] to be blatant, it is a paradoy [sic] of illuminati"

But my favorite is:
 "I think she needs as [sic] exorcism or something because there is definitely something wrong with that girl. (*goes to church and repents for watching this video*)" 
I like imagining that in the middle of writing that comment he was like "brb repenting." I think the asterisks make it, because otherwise it's just someone saying "I'm going to go to church." With them, he's doing it right now, and it takes like 5 seconds, cause he gives it all the ceremony of a "*hugs*".

-Charlie