Paramore more more

I have a pretty poor taste in life experiences. If I had a bucket list there would only be one thing on it: "To see Paramore perform 'That's What You Get'" and I could cross that off. Don't say you weren't warned. Despite this obviously dumb love for something trivial I was underwhelmed by their first release from their 2013 self titled album, 'Now'. It wasn't until  BBCR1's Live Lounge version of Still Into You that I decided to sit up and listen.

'Growing Up' is the punchy introduction into the "you're on your own; grow up and deal with it" theme. A message both for the band's ageing audience as well as themselves. There's a lot of speculation on how they'll do post the issues of 2011 but I'm a New Critic and dealing with autobiography is for the smaller minded. 'Ain't it Fun' is a bittersweet, gospel choir included, reiteration of this theme. The really good one.

'[One of Those] Crazy Girls' doesn't do much in feminist agenda but who am I to judge when it's been in my head since last Tuesday. Appropriate when mixed with Silver Linings Playbook.

The passive aggressive rub-it-in-your-face-I'm-so-happy (slightly Hawaiian?) interludes 'Moving On'/'Holiday'/'I'm Not Angry Anymore' break up the volumes with a vindictive smirk I am 100% on board with.

'Fast In My Car' is also very appropriate when bought on CD and rocking in a ten year old/battered Skoda Fabia. Who says you need a good stereo-system or anything that can go over 70mph anyway.

I was asked if Paramore is "better than their old stuff" and I don't really have an answer for that. I recognise that saying "it's different" is about as helpful as covering doorhandles in mashed potato but it's just that. Different. I guess any woman who can fearlessly wear her fringe like this will have my admiration no matter what. 

Look at how badass that is. I believe it's this haircut which inspired the lyrics to 'Proof': "If I'm a woman with no fear just like I claim I am" - obviously you are Williams, obviously you are.

Save Rock and Roll: Track 12 'Imitation and Gender Insubordination'

Judith Butler wrote in Imitation and Gender Insubordination that when an identity is reiterated the new assertion of identity displaces the identity asserted before.

I am desperately trying to not let Save Rock and Roll displace From Under the Cork Tree or Infinity on High or Take This To Your Grave because the new identity is the lasting one.

It's not that I didn't enjoy the singles from the album but they were boring. They lacked all the punk gusto of their 2004 album. Perhaps it was unrealistic of me to expect even a hint of that but Stump's weight wasn't the only thing the band lost.

My suspicions should have been raised when my pop-loving housemate told me she loved 'My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)' instead of subjecting me to the usual chastisement I was so used to receiving for enjoying Fall Out Boy.

It's a mediocre/good pop album with a nice range of collaborative singers. 'Alone Together' and 'Young Volcanoes' are my favourites so far but I guess it's going to take more than two listens to convince me that this identity is one I can get on board with.

So with that in mind, Fall Out Boy, hopefully your next identity will be at least a little more influenced by some of your older ones:

"Is it in yet?": sexualization and the ending in Goblin Market

Christina Rossetti's "children's" poem Goblin Market (1862) is a magical tale about a female society in conjunction with a male-trade marketplace. Or is it? Is it actually a highly sexualised depiction of a microcosm of society with an ending so plain it makes you want to tear out your eyeballs? (Hint it's the latter).

The unavoidable symbol of the mouth, when traced through the poem, highly sexualises Laura and her behaviour. All pleasures are that of the mouth; emphasis is placed on the sense of taste; Lizzie cries to her sister "eat me, drink me, love me". Is sisterly love the kind that can be eaten and drunk from a body? The narrative is laced with homoeroticism - at the very beginning of the narrative we are told the sisters cling to one another "with clasping arms and cautioning lips / with tingling cheeks and finger tips" in a description that begs to evoke coital imagery. 

The sexual relations don't stop there. To save her sister, Lizzie must be effectively "gang-raped". After forbidding her from the male-economy marketplace by refusing to trade her money for their produce they demand a lock of her hair - like her sister gave. Trading her body and using herself as a commodity is the only way to communicate with the Goblins and attempt to participate in the economy. W'hen she refuses, they force themselves upon her and begin to force their "fruits" into her mouth; bombarding her in a grotesquely horrifying scene in which she could be read to remain chaste as she rejects their attempts to penetrate her mouth.

Despite this highly-sexualised portrait, the text seems to be an advocate for female communities without the influence of patriarchy, female education and female freedom. Until the ending. The final passage begins with a stereotypical, conventional: "when both were wives / with children of their own". Despite the conventions that should lead us to accept this ending, resisting readers will be more than taken aback. We've followed the trail of breadcrumbs that led us to believe that these women defy conventions and are outside of the mould - and Rossetti stops us in our tracks. Perhaps it's an advocation of  female lineage or perhaps sexuality - after all marriages need to be consummated and children need to be made - or perhaps it's the interesting twist/fissure for the reader to continue their thinking. Maybe Rossetti simply couldn't end the poem any other way  through constraint by expectations of the period. Either way it's a shame that readers don't get the feminist freedom they so long for, but perhaps it is actually for the better. Prompting discussion and hinting that being a young female can be idyllic, filled with goblins (and sex) but we all grow up and become wives and that's how it should be. It's just up to readers 150 years on to question that.

Badass power women: Queen Elizabeth I to Lady Thatcher

"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too"

Now if that doesn't want to get you up off your cushion and start banging your tankard against a wooden post with hearty cheers then I don't know what will.

Queen Elizabeth I is traditionally viewed as the first badass woman in a place of real power in this country. This post is coming at a very appropriate time for badass-power women (RIP Lady Thatcher) so 410 years since Liz' death we can all say that - well actually - we've not come that far.

The Queen had to fight to maintain her position as head-monarch. Given to her supposedly by God - 'divine right to the throne' which according to her speeches, at least, she believed she had: "God hath raised me high" - it was going to take more than that to keep her there. The male-dominated government saw policy as a man's job and since it was currently her job, they insisted on getting her married off to one of three potential suitors. Think of the government as the Cilla Black of the 16th century.

She then adopted this bizarre way of talking about her sex as both derogatory and empowering. She adopted "prince" to mean both a male and female monarch; took her female sex and used it to her advantage, acknowledging it's supposed "weakness" she turned it round to construct an image of herself as married to/mothering her country as a chaste female, pledging herself to God. The opening quote from her speech to the troops at Tilbury is a perfect example. She also referenced herself as male: "the heart and stomach of a king" not to mention the brain - she was educated to the same standard as any prince before herself - she's attempting to create an equality between herself and previous rulers. 

Whether this actually worked to comfort a kingdom in a time of economic and social turmoil we'll never know. But we do know that she reigned for 45 years - a lot longer than most of them in this period - and was only forced out of court by her inevitable death.

Based on that, you could say, she was indeed the Margaret Thatcher of her time; strong-willed, powerful, and diving opinions. Queen Elizabeth who wasn't necessarily a patron of females in power - executing her sister and competition to the throne wasn't exactly feminist - addressed parliament very early on in her reign (1566) recognising the end of it and the female body's true weakness, the humanness of it:

"I care not for death, for all men are mortal"

Riling for battle and comfort in the face of death. Queenie sure knew how to make a good speech.

The Shoemaker's Holiday: 1599 or 2013?

Complaints about European immigrants stealing British jobs. A prominent class system. A backdrop of overseas war. Yesterday's paper? Or some of the issues discussed in Thomas Dekker's sixteenth century play The Shoemaker's Holiday?

The city comedy is a snapshot of London life for three class systems: shoemakers, lower gentry and upper gentry (effectively the working, middle and upper classes respectively).

To avoid going to France and inevitably dying in the mainland war one of the text's central figures, Lacy, disguises himself as a Dutch shoemaker.

The Dutch culture is stereotyped with a "typical" stock character name, Hans Meulter, a butchery of the Dutch language "Der was een bore van Gelderland, Frolick sie byen; He was als dronck he could niet stand" and probably offensively culturally-appropriated costume. He is treated as a clown by the other characters - only allowed to work alongside them as it is suggested that his language is a source of comedy for the other characters and undoubtedly the audience. In fact, Dutch shoemakers made up a considerable portion of shoemakers in London during the period in which the play was published. They were a real threat to the British shoemakers in the industry. The audience (particularly the British working class) would have relished in the mockery of Hans as Dekker constructs the Dutch as sub- to the dominant English.

The class system is what the play's romance plot centres around. Lacy and Rose cannot marry because Lacy is of too high birth according to Rose's father. Lacy's uncle agrees in an attempt to maintain the class boundaries and establish a - blah blah blah basically the boring storyline/plot with a marriage at the end conventional of comedy to distract from all the bigger themes going on in the text. A very clever double plot but still. Relevant because of today's Great British class calculator. Thanks BBC for reinforcing that.

The backdrop of the war in France is the fissure in the text - the bigger picture in comparison to the petty squabbles and carnivalesque disguises taking place in London. Rafe comes back from war maimed but we're encouraged to interpret his return as lucky to have come back at all. The fact he was torn from Jane so soon after their marriage is constructed as Jane behaving out of order (emotional woman stereotype) while Rafe fulfils his duty as a man - stereotyping traditional gender politics. Meanwhile Lacy's avoidance of going to war at all is skimmed over in an attempt to maintain the romance plot line.

Overall we're left unsettled with the war plot line and disturbed almost at how the petty dealings of shoemakers and "real-life" is played up meanwhile the big issues are skimmed over, ignored and underplayed.

The text is a catalogue of modern current affairs issues in the sixteenth century; it's both a credit to Dekker's craft that the text has stood the test of time but also a signal of disappointment that over four hundred years later as a nation we are still struggling with the same issues.

Bad Blood: bringing literature to your veins & ears

Who's kicking herself she didn't venture over to the Reading Festival tent where Bastille were playing last summer?

The release of Bad Blood was enough to encourage me to ditch my tri-weekly caramel macchiatos in favour of The Extended Cut - and if you're asking if it's worth it - I'm refusing to update my iPhone on the basis that the album will disappear from my easily accessible "recently added" playlist.

'The Weight of Living, Pt. II' has a special place in this English Lit girl's heart because any piece of art that mentions an albatross might as well slap you across the face with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and subsequently Paradise Lost and then Frankenstein and even Hamlet and all the other texts that live in your western cultured veins whether you know it or not.

The ageing theme of 'Laughter Lines' and 'Oblivion' is a grotesque look into the future; it's fresh in comparison to the overused hedonism in pop music but I guess I'm more comfortable with/desensitised to Ke$ha's carnivalesque 'Die Young' than: die old and wrinkly.

'These Streets' is the belter though - the hipster's 'We Are Never Getting Back Together'. Twirly and passionate.

Special mentions go to:

• 'Daniel in the Den' for being generally great in every aspect
• 'Laura Palmer' for being so emotionally arresting I thought I might have a heart attack on an elliptical trainer
• 'The Silence' for lyrically bitchslapping us all into growing some balls and using our words
• and acoustic 'Flaws' for it's fantastic strings