September 15, 2006

While I'm picking on CNN

I might as well add that the idiot who writes the photo captions can join the fool who select the photos in the warm glow of scorn:

Marianne

Marianne Faithfull is 59 years old, has numerous albums, and all CNN can come up with is "best known for being a former girlfriend of Mick Jagger."

Posted by binky at September 15, 2006 05:04 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Media


Comments

Ack. I've always wanted to like her, but her "distinctive gravelly voice" is just... godawful.

(And, y'know, I don't think that's necessarily an unfair statement, at least as far as a US audience is concerned. The article at least is pretty balanced.)

Posted by: jacflash at September 15, 2006 06:30 PM | PERMALINK

How about "known for having one of the sweetest singing voices in pop until she turned it to gravel with a heroin addiction" or "was the first person from outside the band invited to sing with Metallica." Something. Anything other than "remembered for having a boyfriend 40 years ago."

Posted by: binky at September 15, 2006 07:47 PM | PERMALINK

Hmmm, I don't (ever) want to defend CNN - but is this statement incorrect? I mean maybe she SHOULD be known for other reasons, but all I've ever heard about her is that she had something to do with The Rolling Stones (and now I know what that something was).

Posted by: Armand at September 15, 2006 07:58 PM | PERMALINK

She had a LOT to do with the Stones, in the sense that their management "discovered" her (at a Stones record release party, no less), produced her first recordings, had Jagger and Richards write several songs for her, etc., etc., this all a couple of years before she and M.J. started dating. She was very much associated with the band (in the public mind, at least) from, oh, 1964 through '72 or so.

To the extent that she's remembered at all over here outside of a very small and hearing-impaired circle of critics, it's for the Stones connection.

Posted by: jacflash at September 15, 2006 08:05 PM | PERMALINK

Oh, Jacflash, you aren't part of the MTV Generation?

Posted by: binky at September 15, 2006 08:32 PM | PERMALINK

I gave up MTV when I stopped watching it in Baltar's family room, circa 1985. And one Metallica cameo doesn't change the fact that she IS best known for the thing with Jagger.

Posted by: jacflash at September 15, 2006 08:44 PM | PERMALINK

Well, if that's the best thing she's known for, why is she getting headlines? And, don't you think they could even acknowledge that she was/is famous for singing (your comments about her talent notwithstanding) as, you know, co-equal with her girlfriendness? But no, under her photo, accompanying a story about her cancer, it's got to be the "dated Mick Jagger" quote. Not "singer, songwriter, Marianne Faithful" with a mention of Mick somewhere about her early work which led to the romance and junkie behaviour. Bah.

Posted by: binky at September 15, 2006 08:49 PM | PERMALINK

That IS why she's getting headlines. She's not getting headlines off her current music, for sure.

Posted by: jacflash at September 15, 2006 08:54 PM | PERMALINK

OK, let's try this again. The picture caption, see, the picture caption? Now, compare the picture caption to the first paragraph of the story. In the story, we have all the information, including the Mick Jagger part. Fine. Mick Jagger is part of her past, and one of the reasons for which she is famous. It's all right there, right next to the picture. Of all the possible things they could have selected to put under her photo, they pick the Mick Jagger stuff. Not "singer diagnosed with cancer" not "singer cancels tour due to cancer" not a simple "Marianne Faithful." And again it was "the idiot who writes the photo captions," not "the idiot who wrote the story." The person who wrote the story put it in context.

Posted by: binky at September 15, 2006 09:09 PM | PERMALINK

And what the caption said is that that's what she's best known for. And I say, again, considering CNN's likely US audience and considering her history, that's not an unreasonable assumption.

Posted by: jacflash at September 15, 2006 09:33 PM | PERMALINK

It's also not an unreasonable assumption that a woman might only be recognized for her (however brief and distant) relationship to a man, not her own (apparently easily dismissed) accomplishments.

Posted by: binky at September 15, 2006 09:45 PM | PERMALINK

"Her own accomplishments" would not merit a mention of this kind on CNN. Thus, I draw the conclusion I have, and I disagree with you: I do not think it is reasonable to try to jam this situation into your prefab storyline.

Posted by: jacflash at September 15, 2006 11:20 PM | PERMALINK

Just because you don't like her work, doesn't mean she hasn't had a life of accomplishment, or that the only thing she ever accomplished was that she dated Mick Jagger.

Hell, I wouldn't even caption Jerry Hall's picture that way, and she was with him a lot longer.

Posted by: binky at September 15, 2006 11:43 PM | PERMALINK

Now THAT could be a fun project for us - what will be the headline on Jerry Hall's obituary? Personally I'd think some of the following words would have to be in it - tall model Bryan Ferry Mick Jagger ... and maybe "accent".

As to this, it seems to me you are just talking past each other. Binky's focused on what she thinks the caption should say, and Jacflash is discussing the validity of the caption that was used. Does the caption merit scorn? Possibly. Is the caption accurate? That's an empirical question, but I'm guessing that it is.

And do ex-girl/boyfriends merit obits all their own even if what they are best known for is simply fooling around with someone famous? In our celebrity-mad culture I'd say the answer is yes. And yeah, maybe that's sad and pathetic but I imagine "Mr. X was best known for sucking on Fergie's toes" is already filed away, waiting to be used.

Posted by: Armand at September 15, 2006 11:56 PM | PERMALINK

Actually I probably should have written veracity instead of validity.

Posted by: Armand at September 16, 2006 12:04 AM | PERMALINK

Which I think is colored by the fact that Jacflash is a Stones man, and I could care less about the Stones, but appreciate Faithfull's work. At least, I've listened to her work more in the last decade than I have the Stones, who I could go the rest of my life without listening to again.

As I said above, a couple of times, it's not that in the context of discussing her life, that Jagger was mentioned. It is mentioned in the article, and is perfectly true. I disagree that the best descriptor of an artist is a mention of the person she had sex with for awhile when she was young. They could have written "former collaborator" or "songwriter for" emphasizing her accomplishments (and if you check her biography, which I was just motivated to do, on her website, ol' Micky barely gets a mention, while her musical collaboration with him and Richards is something that does get highlighted).

Thank goodness I'm a nobody who fucks other nobodies.

Posted by: binky at September 16, 2006 12:22 AM | PERMALINK

"only thing she has accomplished" != "thing she is most known for in the mass public mind"

I stand by my assertions.

Posted by: jacflash at September 16, 2006 07:44 AM | PERMALINK

kevin federline: dancer, hip hop, ahem, artist, but "best known" for being britney's babydaddy.

Posted by: moon at September 16, 2006 12:28 PM | PERMALINK

Correct, because he does not have a career full of albums, roles, tours, etc.

Posted by: binky at September 16, 2006 12:58 PM | PERMALINK

i don't disagree with armand's account that people are just talking past each other on this one, and i'm not disputing that a fairer accounting of virtually anyone's life would not start with their intimate relationships of whatever sort, and i know all i'm doing by saying the following is joining jacflash in yelling "apple" to your "orange," but i can't resist saying that you simply don't get to decide what someone's "best known" for.

by a show of hands, the people who've been talking here, with you as an obvious exception, all seem to know faithfull best as jagger's wife. so i'd say the caption writer a) did a pretty good job of figuring out how best to identify her (what a caption under a head shot tends to aim to do) and b) probably did the best job possible to get people to read the article, since people overall are probably a lot more interested in her vis-a-vis jagger than they are in her own rite (her album sales probably support that proposition).

make no mistake, eyeballs are the point. "degrade female musicians," i'm sure, is quite a bit lower on the caption writer's list of priorities than "make people stay on this page long enough to notice and click through the banner ads."

oh, and my dad once had jagger in his cab back in the seventies. and, as my dad puts it when he trucks out the story, "the woman he was was NOT jerry hall." ;-)

Posted by: moon at September 16, 2006 05:41 PM | PERMALINK

the people who've been talking here, with you as an obvious exception, all seem to know faithfull best as jagger's wife.

If that is the case, then I declare victory.

She wasn't his wife. But if you want to remember her that way, go right ahead.

Posted by: binky at September 16, 2006 11:20 PM | PERMALINK

1) I am not under the illusion that she was married to Mick, so no victory for you. :-P

2) I emphatically second what Moon said: You don't get to decide what someone is "best known" for.

There's more, but I'll sit on it for now.

Posted by: jacflash at September 17, 2006 09:46 AM | PERMALINK

But the caption writer at CNN does? Bah, I say, bah! Besides, I think that her best known qualities differ by generation. I've done a little web browsing and there seem to be three things that pop up with her: her work (with most of the focus on the album she made after ruining her voice with heroin but which was a masterpiece - I read one review at the NRO that said something like it's the kind of album most artists wish for their entire lives), a symbol of the lost innocence of the sixties (and here, the Jagger stuff is part) and amongst the kiddies that she is "that chick in the Metallica video." The common denominator of all of those is the musical career, by the way. :P

Posted by: binky at September 17, 2006 10:49 AM | PERMALINK

oops. but if we're declaring victory for things like that, then i declare victory by default on my eyeballs for advertisers vs. evil caption-writing hegemons.

Posted by: moon at September 17, 2006 10:51 AM | PERMALINK
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