Leah
Caldwell outlines how LMFAO picked up the free-floating aesthetic of Party Rock
and solidified it into a trademark: a brand. Their music videos and songs provide
verbal and visual cues and deploy commodity signifiers, such as the sunglasses
or the animal print spandex, ultimately serving as a “how-to party-rock guide”
(Caldwell) that their listeners can (literally) buy into.
While LMFAO brands a specific type of Party Rock experience, ethos, or even sensibility, is one that, in the contemporary moment, has seeped
beyond the club culture’s dance floor. I propose that Toby Keith’s 2011 single,
“Red Solo Cup” begins to map out a Country-style Party Rock aesthetic and
sensibility. By analysing how Toby Keith appropriates the Party Rock aesthetic
in both the verbal and visual cues of the music video, I will flesh out how
Keith invites the listener to perform a specific type of masculinity. This
masculinity, I will argue, is inextricably tied to the interaction between the
male body and the commodities that surround him, specifically the red Solo cup.
How might Keith’s fetishistic portrayal of the red Solo cup, the most “disposable.
. .drinking receptacle” (Keith), begin to articulate the interaction between
gendered, nationalized, and classed bodies and commodities? With these
questions in mind, I will begin to formulate a gender, class, and national
politics of Party Rock.
This video,
surprisingly, took home the Video of the Year at the 2012 Country Music Awards,
was featured on an episode of Glee , and is now Toby Keith’s bestselling single
(Whitaker). But perhaps it is not so surprising that a song so simple, in both
subject matter and structure, that it verges on – to put it bluntly – stupidity
, was so popular among, not only Country music fans, but a wide array of music
listening preferences. The lyrics and video provide a clear set of visual and
verbal cues for the listener/ viewer to follow in order to recreate the party
atmosphere. While LMFAO cues their audience to “put your hands up” (LMFAO),
repeating this direction over and over, Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup” hook gives
the simple directions to fill up the red Solo cup and lift it up. However, Toby
Keith, unlike LMFAO who direct the party participants to “put your hands up”,
uses the first person to describe his actions; “I fill you up. . .I lift you up”
(Keith). There is no direct reference to the audience; rather the addressee of
the song is the red Solo cup. Keith invites his listeners to repeat the chorus
as they perform the actions he instructs; it is literally a “Party Rock anthem” (emphasis added).
“Red Solo Cup” is not the first
song to profess its love for an inanimate object
and it is perhaps this fetishization of commodity objects that provides continuity
between hip-hop, club culture, and Country Music. Joshua Clover notes the
prominence of the commodity and material possessions in the performance of
hip-hop, and especially gangsta rap, masculinities, offering the interpretation
that “bling” is fuelled by “poverty’s fantasy of material wealth (47). Despite
the different racial, class, and gender politics of Country music, the
commodity object is central to “Red Solo Cup”, so much that the lyrics and
concept of the song are easily transferable to rap.
( jump to 2:04)
Now for the most obvious, and
perhaps most important question, why the red Solo cup? Why raise a red Solo cup
and not a glass (think Pink’s “Raise Your Glass”), or a shot glass (think
LMFAO’s “Shots”)? This choice of “drinking receptacle” (Keith) and the
interactions outlined in the song/ video forms the basis for the politics of
gender, class, and nationality that it invites the audience to perform. Using –
or abusing – the red Solo cup is tied to the American working-class masculinity
performed in this video. The only time the audience is directly addressed, Toby
Keith sings, “and you sir, do not have a pair of testicles/ if you prefer
drinkin’ from a glass” (Keith). He is equating this commodity object with the
performance of this masculinity. Judith Butler states that “one is not simply a
body, but, in some very key sense, one does one’s body” (521). In capitalist North
America, where commodities are omnipresent, a way that one “does” one’s body,
performs gender, nationality, class, is through the use and abuse of commodity
objects.
The “cheap and disposable”
(Keith) red Solo cup represents a party rock sensibility that still values
physical work. Unlike LMFAO’s Party Rock that consumes everyday life – a never-ending
party in which “everyday [they’re] shufflin’” (LMFAO), Toby Keith’s party is
short-lived, just like the red Solo cup. The party is limited by the life-span of the cup, and the underlying assumption of the video is that after the party ends, the participant will go back to work.Country Party Rock performs a hard-working
masculinity that is rooted in American patriotism and capitalism. There is also
a way that the red Solo cup, as a party accessory, translates well into
specific performances of Canadian masculinity centred upon hockey culture. In
fact, there is now a red Solo cup line of clothing – much like LMFAO’s Party
Rock line – that equate the red Solo cup with American patriotism.
Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup”, therefore,
provides a point of intersection between commodity culture, masculinity,
American patriotism, and the Pop/Country music industry.
Toby Keith’s epiphany of the song
(1:57 of video), is that the red Solo cup is not just a cup, but his friend. The
video creates an aura of authenticity with the lighting and perspective of the camera
and unlike LMFAO lacks the spectacular elements of Party Rock, until this moment
of epiphany. Toby Keith, in this moment reveals the ridiculousness of his own
song, and I argue, in this single moment of spectacularity, begins to critique
the fetishization of the commodity object in Country music, and perhaps even
pop music itself. While it is one thing to write a love song about a truck,
Toby Keith stretches the admiration of a commodity object to the extreme,
trading in the truck for a disposable cup. However, the omnipresence and
centrality of the commodity, once again, overshadows and undermines his very
critique. The Party Rock aesthetic that Keith invites the listener/viewers to
perform is inextricably reliant on the presence of the red Solo cup. The
commodity object provides the basis for the gender, class, and national politics
of the Country Party Rock aesthetic and sensiblity; ultimately, one cannot “proceed
to party” without the red Solo cup.
Works
Cited
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts
and Gender Construction: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-531. Print.
Caldwell, Leah. “Everybody Have
Fun Tonight.” The New Inquiry. The
New Inquiry., 31 May 2012. Web. 10 Feb. 2013.
Clover, Joshua. 1989:Bob Dylan Didn’t Have This to Sing
About. Berkeley: U of California Press,
2009. Print.
Keith, Toby. “Toby Keith- Red Solo
Cup (Unedited version).” YouTube, YouTube,
10 Oct. 2011. Web. 10 Feb.
2013.
“LMFAO- Party Rock Anthem Lyrics.”
Song Lyrics. SongLyrics, n.d. Web. 13
Feb 2013.
Sick Swag. “Red Solo Cup (Hip-Hop
Remix).” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Jan.
2012. Web. 10 Feb. 2013.
“Toby Keith - Red Solo Cup
Lyrics.” Song Lyrics. SongLyrics,
n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2013.
Whitaker, Sterling. “Toby Keith’s
‘Red Solo Cup’ Becomes Singer’s All-Time Bestselling Single.” Taste
of Country, Taste of Country. 18 July 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2013.
