Courtney Love is one of the few who have not “gone soft with age.” And bless her for it, because it proves that contempt for bullshit can be a fountain of youth. Her penchant for invective is nothing new, reaching one of many crescendos during the height of the riot grrrl movement, a “category” she resented being associated with as she called out the poseurs touting “revolution” in the 1994 coda to Live Through This, “Rock Star.” And yes, Kathleen Hanna was collateral damage in that verbal rage which manifested physically.
Her venomousness, of late, has compelled her to be among the more vocal female musicians speaking out in defense of Britney Spears as she rails against the tyrannical, terrorist cabal behind the conservatorship. Going off on this injustice for most of last week (and continuing her tirades still), Love also found time to notice a very striking similarity from some Olivia Rodrigo promo stills for the Sour Prom, a live streamed “prom” the “rock”/pop star (and likely her team of handlers) is wielding to milk the most possible mileage out of what remains of her commodifiable teen years (having just freshly graduated high school).
As for Love, she wasn’t much impressed by any attempt at a “tribute,” lambasting it more fully in another post that went on to explain the overt plagiarism at hand, also bringing photographer Ellen von Unwerth’s name into the fray, for she, too, has a right to some credit. And, yes, Love feels compensation, to boot.
Most who saw the initial callout on Twitter in which Love captioned Rodrigo’s prom image with, “Can you spot the differences? #twinning” were decidedly Team Olivia, with such defenses as: Courtney doesn’t have the monopoly on prom aesthetics and Rodrigo is “just a kid,” so give her a break. Meh. Giving kids breaks is apparently what makes them think it’s okay to record themselves saying “chink.” In any case, Love went in more depth on Facebook, perhaps knowing on some level that Gen Z doesn’t really fuck with that apparatus, ergo her feeling emboldened enough to add, “Does Disney teach kids reading and writing? God knows. Let’s see. Yes this is rude. Rage-inducing? Honey if I had a dollar for [every time] this happens? I’d be real rich!” Rodrigo, playing further into the tone deafness Love maligned her for—or simply trying to “kill ‘em with kindness”—eventually commented on Love’s “#twinning” post, “love u and live through this sooooo much” [presumably said in “she is such a fugly slut” voiceover tone]. Though evidently not enough to acknowledge pulling her aesthetic from Hole’s mid-90s masterpiece. Or perhaps she never really knew anything about Hole in the first place (again, Gen Z), and this was the advice her team gave her on how to “react” to Love’s confrontation.
More than mere “credit,” however, Love wanted the courtesy (even if they were going to go through with it regardless) of being asked for/warned about use of such a concept—permission from both herself and von Unwerth. Love thusly announced, “Stealing an original idea and not asking permission is rude. There’s no way to be elegant about it. I’m not angry. It happens all the time to me. But this was bad form.” Those who were not necessarily pro-Olivia, so much as “pro-reason” were sure to remind Love that she did not have the copyright on prom queen imagery, and that she herself clearly borrowed from Carrie. What’s more, Love didn’t seem to mind when Lana Del Rey posed as a prom queen for a 2012 Q Magazine (RIP) photoshoot. Maybe that’s just because Lana at least felt obliged to “put her own Carrie spin on things” with blood in addition to smeared mascara… or because Love ended up becoming friends with Del Rey and going on tour with her. But, in this case, Love isn’t down to fulfill some kind of “mentor” role just because “older” women in music are supposed to show generosity to the younger ones out of, what’s that catch phrase again?–female solidarity… of the variety that so obviously doesn’t bear authenticity in many instances.
Like Rodrigo, Del Rey, too, holds a bouquet of flowers in the aforementioned photo. Flowers, incidentally, are what Love asked for as recompense for Rodrigo’s “rude” behavior, listing the name of her preferred florist in London. Whether some would like to tear Love down or not for her “boomer” or “crazy woman” sensibilities for having the “cojones” to tell Rodrigo to learn some fuckin’ manners when it comes to “homage,” she said what she said and there’s no turning back. And there’s no doubt that if someone like Taylor Swift (who Rodrigo—and pretty much everyone—reveres more than Love) was making cries of being copied without permission, the peanut gallery would bow down and cheer her on for her courage in furthering artists’ rights. What’s more, if it was Taylor Swift involved, much more attention would be given to the accusation. But because it’s Love, unfortunately most of the Gen Z ilk will likely have this entire news blip go over their heads. And those who do see it surely won’t be deterred from watching the Sour Prom. After all, Love is just another “old lady” to them, like fellow former victim of Love’s vitriol, Madonna. What does their opinion on anything matter when it’s Gen Z’s “time to shine”—a.k.a. freely rip off the work of previous generations.
But this latest “celebrity feud” speaks to an increasingly evident truth about the génération du moment: they have absolutely nothing groundbreaking to say or showcase. And maybe that’s a symptom of overall flaccidity from being the first generation to never know a life lived without dependence on screens (an aider and abetter of mimicking what is seen on them), or maybe it’s merely the curse of being born too late in the timeline of human existence to have anything new to proffer. Another case in point of this being the recent riot grrrl-loving movie, Moxie, which highlighted how Gen Z really has nothing of its own, instead spending its entire time scouring other people’s material and “cobbling together” “bits” for their own faux idealistic purposes… or just some fifteen-second videos.
There is no need for originality because, even more than millennials, Gen Z is content to be a people of “curation.” Taking the things they like best from previous trailblazers and “making it their own” (see also: “slowed and reverb”). And yes, that’s been true of art in general throughout the ages, but something about this new breed of plagiarism in the social media age feels more pillaging, more, as Love put it, in “bad form.”
