“Hollywood” is one of those words that has long been meant to serve as a synecdoche for the overall grotesquerie of the kind of skewed, celebrity-obsessed country that has given a depraved orange man the twenty-four hour reality show he always dreamed of having (that is, in between his dreams of grabbing women’s pussies). Shit, that most Americans dream of having, even if they can’t admit it to themselves. So it was that, on her debut album, The Family Jewels, Marina and the Diamonds (who likes to confuse people with her plurality as a solo entity the way Florence + the Machine does) ruminated on this city/concept with a song of the same name.
Having just gained her foothold into the music industry, Marina opened the record with “Are You Satisfied?,” on which she establishes her nervousness over having achieved her longtime former fantasy of getting a proper record deal, worried it will feel hollower than expected as she describes, “I was pulling out my hair the day I got the deal/Chemically calm, was I meant to feel happy that my life was just about to change?” And with that change would come the inevitable glaring spotlight–one that augments tenfold whenever she’s caught posing with Lana Del Rey (the Tumblrverse’s wet dream combo). Easing into the premise of the record, which explores, among other subjects, “the seduction of commercialism, modern social values, family and female sexuality,” “Hollywood” arrives as the bifurcating point on the album as track seven, firmly solidifying Diamandis’ ardent appeal to her listeners to take a harsh look at their undeniably shallow priorities through her gleeful sarcasm.
At the time of the song’s official release in January of 2010, Marina explained of her choice to select it as single material to BBC News, “I’m saying: this is who I was. Hollywood infected my brain and I really valued the wrong things in life, but I changed dramatically. This obsession with celebrity culture is really unhealthy. I don’t want to live my life like that, and I don’t want to be a typical pop star.” And no, Marina has never been that.
That being said, the idea behind the video essentially picked up where Madonna’s own “Hollywood” left off, highlighting the false glamor and caricaturized (yet not inaccurate) Americana that favors big proportions, cheerleaders, football players, hot dogs, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley (again, Marina’s Lana connection is strong with that icon duo at play). Drunk on American dreams before arriving and seeing just how hard it is to succeed at that thing called “happiness” through materialism, especially in a place as costly as “America,” which, in truth, for most people, only boils down to New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco (even in these times of love shown for the gamma cities like Portland and Austin), Marina, and others like her, only end up “puking” over the false yarn they were spun by Hollywood.
Marina’s composition of the song when the U.S. was retrospectively in what will likely be its only golden age of the twenty-first century makes it all the more morose to listen to now, with her reminder to all that, “Hollywood infected your brain/You wanted kissing in the rain, oh, oh/Living in a movie scene/Puking American dreams, oh, oh/I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America, ooh.” The obsession still holds for many people on the outside looking in, only these days, it has more to do with watching how glorious in its macabreness the trainwreck is–again, only if you’re on the outside of it with popcorn in hand for added mockery factor. And surely no amount of anti-glam films released in the post-#MeToo era are going to help remedy the very overt cracks in the veneer. The blemishes that can’t and won’t be covered any longer. The pock-marked facade that suddenly very obviously seems like an entity you should run from as opposed to toward.
Diamandis would also note during the promotion period for the song, “That track is a sarcastic and cynical take on everything that’s commercial about America. I love the country and people dearly and can’t wait to tour there but I hate the way it brainwashes you. I am seduced by its pop culture but I don’t want my brain to be infected.”
Thus, in exploring the dangerous drug that is the “American dream”–that people, specifically foreigners–still somehow can’t help but fall for, Marina manages to come out from under the trance of her own brainwashing. This, too, is in part why she’s stayed out of the public eye for almost a full three years since the release of her last album in 2015, Froot.
While we don’t yet know what will dominate the themes of her fourth album (expected to be released later this year), it’s likely that touching on the American nightmare (no longer disguised as a dream) will be at play. This time, however, Marina and the Diamonds will not be able to tout the attraction of being brainwashed–for there’s nothing alluring about a cult leader that looks like a radioactive (another title of a Marina song on Electra Heart) plucked chicken not even “trying to stimulate a mind that is slowly starting to decay.” Which is just as the majority he “reigns” over prefers it.
