Joni Mitchell: Music and Feminism
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Joni Mitchell: music and feminism Article (Unspecified) Charnock, Ruth (2012) Joni Mitchell: music and feminism. United Academics: Journal of Social Sciences, 2 (12). pp. 90-107. ISSN 2212-5736 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/43632/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse: Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University. Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available. Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk BIOGRAPHY Joni Mitchell ‘I Wasn’t a Protest Singer When It Was Fashionable’1: Joni Mitchell: Music & Feminism lowing exchange: By: Ruth Charnock Harry: ‘What is this we’re listening to?’ Karen: ‘Joni Mitchell.’ n Richard Curtis’ 2003 film Love Actual- Harry: ‘I can’t believe you still listen to Joni Ily, Emma Thompson’s beleaguered wife, Mitchell.’ Karen, is wrapping presents with her soon- Karen: ‘I love her and true love lasts a life- to-be-unfaithful husband, Harry (Alan Rick- time. Joni Mitchell is the woman who taught man). Playing in the background is Joni your cold English wife how to feel.’ Mitchell’s anti-Christmas Christmas song Harry: ‘Did she? Oh, well, that’s good, I must ‘River’, with Mitchell singing of a ‘selfish write to her sometime and say thanks.’3 and sad’ lover who has ‘gone and lost the Here, Karen’s attachment to the singer4 best baby that [she] ever had.’2 Listening registers for her husband and the audi- to ‘River’, Harry and Karen have the fol- ence as anachronistic – Harry cannot be- BIOGRAPHY lieve that his wife still listens to Joni Mitch- ning’s nostalgia for the girl who ‘spent half ell. In the 2010 film,The Kids Are All Right, of high school in my room crying to that al- Annette Bening’s character Nic sings ‘All I bum [Blue]’5 and her growing distance from Want’ at the dinner table, accompanied by her partner, who looks first bemused then sperm-donor Paul (Mark Ruffalo) - much horrified by her partner’s off-key reverie. to the embarrassment of her children and In Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl, Jess partner Jules (played by Julianne Moore). (played by Deschanel) lies fetal on her Heartfelt and tuneless, Benning’s render- floor, listening to ‘River’ on loop, further ing is an especially uncomfortable mo- inscribing its cultural status as a breakup ment in a film constructed around such song. There is a communal sigh of relief moments. The scene registers both Ben- when Jess is finally persuaded to turn the record off. As housemate Winston puts it Excessive, ‘‘I liked it when you played it for the first time at 10 o’clock last night. I liked it a embarrassing, too little bit less at 2 a.m., and now I’m kind of hoping that the sun comes up, thaws sensitive, Mitchell’s that river, and that woman drowns.’’6 songs have made Excessive, embarrassing, too sensi- tive, Mitchell’s songs have made frequent frequent appearances appearances in popular culture to signify the over-attached woman: lost in the music in popular culture and drowning in her own feelings. Figured to signify the over- in these spaces, hers is music to wallow in, music for breaking up, breaking down, for attached woman when you feel heartbroken - even when it is unclear who has done the breaking. Yet the 93 es of the ‘60s generation in her songs.’7 Feminists have been Specifically, this article will attend to Mitchell’s uneasy relationship with femi- cranky about Mitchell nism,8 a relationship where Mitchell often comes off as fractious, recalcitrant and, as - especially about her Weller puts it, ‘’the dame’, the tough, cranky, refusal to identify boastful woman living for her craft’9 - rather than as a feminist role-model. It will also herself as a feminist consider ‘Woodstock’ as a case example of Mitchell’s influence, but also her uneasiness acuity and range of feeling in Mitchell’s work with regards to becoming a cultural relic. is simplified into female mourning in the de- Considering Mitchell’s conversations pictions above. Moreover, such accounts with feminism (and, somewhat less prob- underplay the breadth, subject matter and lematically, the imbrication of her music influence of Mitchell’s oeuvre, not least the with environmental activism), we also turn role her music has played and continues to our attention to the questions of identity play in the cultural imaginary of the 1960s politics, representation and efficacy inevi- and 70s, in particular. This is not to fall into tably raised when we think about music and the same error as Alan Rickman’s Harry – social activism. If Mitchell is cranky about Mitchell’s music has lost none of its punch feminism then, occasionally, feminists have or relevance and, arguably, the majority of been cranky about Mitchell – especially her lyrics have stood the test of time - even about her refusal to identify herself as a if the production on certain of her albums feminist. This refusal works to disrupt easy has not. As Sheila Weller has said’her mu- narratives about Mitchell as an exemplary sic [is] a form of sociology, of social history. figure for other women, feminist or not. As You can read many of the cultural chang- Michelle Mercer aptly sums it up: ‘[Mitchell BIOGRAPHY a piece of paper from the City Hall’12 to rat- ify her relationship, to state of the nation polemics such as 1994’s ‘Sex Kills’: ‘and the gas leaks/and the oil spills/and sex sells everything/and sex kills.’13 Unmarried mothers Born 1943, in Alberta, Canada the young Joni Mitchell (then Roberta Joan Ander- son) was an only child. As Mitchell has described, her moment of artistic conver- sion came when she was hit by polio aged 914 and was reinforced by a high-school English teacher, who told Mitchell, ‘if you has] already taken enough blame for be- can paint with a brush, you can paint with ing a muse to every flaxen-haired girl who words.’15 At school, Mitchell learnt gui- picked up a guitar and mistook emotional tar and spent the early 1960s playing folk turbulence for art.’10 However, what is in- music in Saskatoon cafes whilst attend- disputable is the extent to which Mitchell’s ing art college. Aged 21, she fell preg- music represents social discontent and de- nant by college boyfriend Brad MacMath, sire for change – from the environmental- moved to Yorkville, Toronto and gave birth ism of ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ (‘they paved para- to a daughter in secret, whom she placed dise and put up a parking lot’), and ‘Wood- in foster care, intending to raise her as stock’ (‘we’ve got to get ourselves back to soon as she was able. She met folk singer the garden’11), to critiques of marriage in Chuck Mitchell one month later in March ‘Song for Sharon’ or ‘My Old Man’ where 1965, and the pair married in June. They Mitchell announces that she doesn’t ‘need 95 formed a musical duo together. Accord- appear on her first album Joni Mitchell, in ing to Joni Mitchell, Chuck had promised 1965-66 Mitchell wrote ‘The Circle Game’ to adopt her daughter and raise her as his (later recorded by folk singer Tom Rush) with own as soon as they were married. Howev- its haunting, disarmingly lullaby-like refrain er, Chuck Mitchell has always denied this ‘the seasons, they go round and round/and account.16 Whatever the truth behind this the painted ponies go up and down/we’re episode, Mitchell was not reunited with her captive on the carousel of time’20 and ‘Urge daughter until 1997. ‘Little Green’, written for Going’21, arguably the first of Mitch- in 1965 but not appearing until 1971’s Blue ell’s bid-for-freedom songs which would recounts Mitchell’s experience of signing reach their culmination in 1976’s Hejira. her daughter’s adoption papers: ‘child with By 1967, the Mitchells had separated a child pretending/ weary of lies you are and Joni Mitchell moved to New York City, sending home/ so you sign all the papers propelled by a burgeoning interest in her in the family name/ you’re sad and you’re songs from more well-known artists such sorry but you’re not ashamed.’17 Mitchell as Rush, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Judy Col- would return to the subject of unmarried lins. Spotted by David Crosby in a Florida mothers in ‘Magdalene Laundries’18 on bar in 1967, by the end of the year she had 1994’s Turbulent Indigo, which depicts a moved to Los Angeles to start her record- woman ‘sent […] to the sisters/for the way ing career in earnest.