New Out-magazine interview !

[Erins Interpretation]

I HOPE they start playing him on the radios here SOON! This is going to be what, his second tour in the US? It's pretty much sold out again!

 

Sure, radio stations here are cool with playing songs that have drugs, alcohol, violence, and affairs in them but heaven forbid if a guy has an amazing vocal range!

 

perfectly worded.

could NOT agree more.

[JackViolet]

I just wish him to be still at the top when he will find the balls to reply to his interviewer: "Yes, I'm gay and perfectly well-adjusted. That's all I'm going to say about the subject and I do not intend to discuss my lovelife in interviews, I already expose my feelings enough in my songs."

 

Honestly that would be awful. I understand why, as a gay man, you would want him to come out, but come on, to make a statement like that would be going against everything he's said so far and would be picked on as hypocritical. "I don't like labels, I refuse to label myself, no labels, no labels---ok, fine, I'm gay"?!

 

If that happened, that really would make it look like he was ashamed or scared about his sexuality and like he had something to hide, and finally the secret's been forced "out" of him. Especially since no one would be asking him to talk about his lovelife anyway--do any openly gay stars get asked as to how their sex life is going? No. So as the only thing really of interest to the media here is his sexual orientation, to finally call himself "gay" would just be giving in and tossing aside all his previous fancy words of disliking being categorized.

 

Nooo, if he ever does decide to open up about this part of his life and do so in the context of revealing an attraction to men, I hope he'll just put it as "yes, I'm interested in men," or "yes, I'm currently dating a man" and leave it at that. That doesn't strictly categorize him (although plenty people would take it to mean he's saying he's gay)--but it also shows he has no problem with acknowledging same sex desire.

 

And I would just like to remind people that there are plenty of reasons one may not choose to "check a box" on their sexuality. One may be open about dating primarily within their own gender and still not identify with the label "gay."

 

--Jack

[Finkster]

i'm not sure... is it a joke or something?? i mean men singing in vocal range of women or having a male/female voice....it doesnt make any sense, what about:

Thom Yorke

Jeff Buckley

Matt Bellamy

Freddie Mercury

Billy corgan

Robert Plant

Prince

Brian Molko

Jasper Steverlinck

Brett Anderson

Morissey and MORE????You can hear those people on american radio cant you??

I dont get it...and if you take someone like Robert Smith i assume that Cure is nerver played on american radio then....

and what about Courtney L, a woman singing like a man, is she banned too??

those guys from the radio station were kidding , right guys?? I've never heard sothg like this before today...

 

Yea, really. Justin Timberlake is also huge, he sings with a high pitched voice. But America can't get enough of him!

Sure, he can turn it on and off at times, but so can Mika. What was wrong with Big Girl? He sings "normally" in that one.

Why have I YET to hear one Mika song on US radio and I've been a fan for nearly a year?

[JackViolet]

Honestly, it's not the voice, it's the image.

 

American mainstream has an problem with the fact that he's so exuberant and flamboyant in his shows, so "camp" as they might say, and theatrical, but yet he doesn't let himself be relegated to the category of "gay novelty act" like the Scissor Sisters are here in the US.

 

In America, men can sing with high voices, but then we'd better see them grabbing women's asses in their videos and being very straight. (Justin's lovelife is pretty public business.) Or if not, then we want them to be clearly gay. We can't handle the ambiguity.

 

Plus they have trouble reconciling the fact that he sings about lollipop girls and dances with big balloons on stage, and yet he is in fact a real musician who's more than all that. Americans want things to be easy and distinct!

 

--Jack

[Finkster]

Honestly, it's not the voice, it's the image.

 

American mainstream has an problem with the fact that he's so exuberant and flamboyant in his shows, so "camp" as they might say, and theatrical, but yet he doesn't let himself be relegated to the category of "gay novelty act" like the Scissor Sisters are here in the US.

 

In America, men can sing with high voices, but then we'd better see them grabbing women's asses in their videos and being very straight. (Justin's lovelife is pretty public business.) Or if not, then we want them to be clearly gay. We can't handle the ambiguity.

 

Plus they have trouble reconciling the fact that he sings about lollipop girls and dances with big balloons on stage, and yet he is in fact a real musician who's more than all that. Americans want things to be easy and distinct!

 

--Jack

 

Aye, but in fact we make things quite complicated, no?

It's clearly all about image.

[marlau_20zr]

HI!!

i read the interview and i read all the coments

JackViolet... I think that Mika is very "camp" to the US... unfornatelly they listen 50 cent, Justin and Rihanna... more "american" performers.. so Mika is like he doesn`t fit there

and radios and tv doen`t like that he didn`t say anything about his sexuality... that for me it doesn`t have anything to do with his career because he is a singer! Mika always says he doen`t like being Tabloid Folder

[lcmlcm]

HI!!

i read the interview and i read all the coments

JackViolet... I think that Mika is very "camp" to the US... unfornatelly they listen 50 cent, Justin and Rihanna... more "american" performers.. so Mika is like he doesn`t fit there

and radios and tv doen`t like that he didn`t say anything about his sexuality... that for me it doesn`t have anything to do with his career because he is a singer! Mika always says he doen`t like being Tabloid Folder

 

i really can't get it....why he's too camp to the US but not rest of the world....

[marlau_20zr]

US is a really rare country

here in Argentina Mika is the best sold international artist and tv and radios put his songs and GK and LT were number 1 and actually Relax is number 1 too

but for the things i have read about music in the US and why they don`t put Mika is because of his looks.. nobody can say that he sings badly!! but appereance is very important there it seems so he doesn`t fit in the normal look of a popstar..

[Fmbm]

America sucks

[findingmywords]

America sucks

IIIIII hate where we live

Let's move to Europe

[Fmbm]

IIIIII hate where we live

Let's move to Europe

 

Hell yeah! Let's go!

[findingmywords]

Wooo-ooo-o-oo-t!

[elanorelle]

Hell yeah! Let's go!

 

Or Canada:) you can move to my village!!!

we can be neighbours! :wub2:

[JackViolet]

Like I said, we don't deal well with camp when it's not a novelty act, pure and simple.

 

Mika's not the only one who has this problem with the US market.

 

Other countries are simply either more accepting or more naive. US occupies an interesting middle ground.

 

 

--Jack

[Fmbm]

Or Canada:) you can move to my village!!!

we can be neighbours! :wub2:

 

Thanks, but I'd rather leave America all together...

 

 

"London calling...."

[JackViolet]

Here's my detailed explanation on the matter--sorry if it turns into a bit of an essay.

 

America has, in all recent history, been a country divided by halves. North vs. South, Black vs. White, Conservative vs. Liberal. Over time, we have become very invested in this one-or-the-other world view, and equally invested in identifying and enforcing these divisions in order to preserve it as a means of preserving our perception of social order.

 

Look at our political spectrum--we are one of the few countries that has only two viable political parties, and people who refuse to choose to either the Republican or Democrat candidate are seen as almost traitors, as evinced by all the hostility that followed Ralph Nader voters over the past few elections. Other Western countries are far more comfortable with matters of nuance. We are not.

 

One of the divides that's particularly vital in American culture (and that is underlaid by a lot of panic) is the one between man and woman. Americans are very much uncomfortable when anything breaches that divide: we want our gender differences clearly marked and unassailable. As such, the position that homosexuality occupies in our popular culture is rather interesting. Americans en masse are still somewhat uneasy with homosexuality (since it so threatens perceived gender roles), but thanks to the after-effects of gay rights movements, it's been becoming more and more prominent in society--which, in some ways, makes it even more troubling for people, since it must now be acknowledged rather than ignored. Americans occupy a unique position here in relation to the rest of the world, where homosexuality and "feminine" behavior in men is either accepted with a lot less fuss (Britain, France), or else the culture as a whole is so conservative that it refuses to notice certain traits as being indicative of homosexuality unless absolutely forced to, and thus manages to coast by in blissful ignorance (Romania, Turkey). America, on the other hand, is both excessively sensitive to possible markers of homosexuality or gender difference, and also not particularly comfortable with it.

 

However, we have learned to make peace with male homosexuality in popular culture provided that it occupies a very specified, easily discerned and defined role.

 

"Acceptable" male homosexuality has been relegated to the sphere of "the feminine," and also the "asexual." The types of gay men that American pop culture embraces are the fashion designers, the stylists, interior decorators and chefs: all of these professions are generally designated as feminine, and none of these are especially sexually provocative. The job of such people is to make the lives of straight people more comfortable or interesting, and to help straight people better realize their sexual desires (in the case of hair stylists and fashion consultants), but the desires of the gay men can be conveniently removed from the field of thought, and chefs or interior decorators are not themselves considered to be particularly "sexy." When these gay men do express sexual desire for other men, it should be done in a joking way that would be funny for the straight audience, or else it should remain out of view and largely academic. Basically, America's decided that gay men are all right so long as they are there to serve for the straight people's use and entertainment. This is also why the amusingly camp, fussy, flamboyant homosexuals are especially favored on tv. (Additionally, flamboyance makes it easy to recognize these men as "gay" and "not a real man" so there is no danger of the aforementioned dreaded confusion between the feminine and the masculine.)

 

Now then, let's move from tv to music. The problem is that gay men's place in music is even more limited than their place in television. There are two main types of musicians: the rock star and the pop star. The rock star is not, in the American consciousness, compatible with "gay man," since a rock star should be swaggeringly masculine, while "gay man" is feminine. Obviously a lot of rock stars play with androgyny, but that's all right so long as they assert their heterosexuality be also being notorious womanizers.

 

The pop star is coded as more feminine--right now especially, the idea of "pop star" is most closely tied to women singers. But the problem with pop stars is that, as feminine, they are seen as sexually desirable--and sexually desirable to straight men--while as gay men (or men in general), in mass American consciousness, are not.

 

The only way that gay musicians can navigate this minefield is either by making their sexuality invisible (ie, acting in accordance to gender roles and also being so unremarkably asexual that their orientation becomes irrelevant), or to offer their sexuality up as a joke. Thus Rob Halford is able to be a "rock star" and gay, but his sexuality is also reduced to a joke among American audiences. And the Scissor Sisters are seen as pop stars, but also as a "gay novelty act"--so that the mass audiences can consider them amusing rather than sexy.

 

Where Mika enters into all of this is that neither his sexuality nor gender identity can be easily fit into this structure. He is a pop star, and male, and some aspects of his self-presentation code him in what Americans perceive as being sexually appealing in a feminine way--but without being able to put that under the label "gay." Meanwhile, since he keeps his sexuality secret, he is simultaneously seen as "sexy" to girls who hope he's straight. His stage theatrics, flamboyance in terms of dress, frequent use of falsetto, etc, mark him out as "feminine," but he refuses to either cement this categorization by admitting homosexuality or to deny it by publicly sleeping with groupies and being such an extreme womanizer that it would off-set his feminine image (like Prince). As long as he remains mum on his orientation, the tension of his sexual appeal and his more feminine characteristics cannot be defused and he cannot be dismissed as a joke, and this makes Americans very uncomfortable. His image and behavior, being unsuited for clear distinction between "masculine" and "feminine," "heterosexual" and "homosexual," is bothersome and threatening to American audiences and their neat conceptions of simple dualities, and so he is not accepted.

 

Since Mika seems neither willing to go and sleep with a bunch of girls in order to lay speculation about his homosexuality to rest, or to validate that speculation by admitting he is gay and allowing his sexuality to be reduced to a joke on the part of American media, it is not likely he will break America in a big way anytime soon.

 

Their loss.

 

--Jack

[A. Clay]

Nimble Mika:

Love ALL his interviews!

 

Get the responses to the last 2 questions:

Uses lots of well-turned phrases to say:

"None of your (or anybody else's) GD business!

 

NIMBLE!

 

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t266/Irishredsx18/l_b015c137116eea389ec89fb5fde46f46.jpg

 

http://img32.picoodle.com/img/img32/4/1/28/f_shhhrc5m_bd6f7db.jpg

[AKateisaKate]

I guess this is the last "imtimate" show we'll see in NY. I think I'm gonig to be ASTONISHEd on Saturday, to say the least.

[celesteee]

awww! thanks for posting!!

[greta]

Hell yeah! Let's go!

OH NO! America is what it is for the people who live in that otherwise beautiful continent:naughty:

[Mariasiv]

Jack you make so much sense to me.. Mika does have a fan base over here in the US but I've always been a fan of UK music so I knew about him from the beginnings. I agree it is our loss if we don't catch the music but unfortunately I hear the same things over and over here all the time. It's hard to break that formula. We are also so into outing this person in the movie and music land over here as well as who is dating who that when it gets more about the personal lives of the artists I don't really like listening to them. Not a huge JT fan for that reason. But I agree that if Mika wishes to say someday yes I am dating a man whatever, then he would stay true to not labeling himself.

 

The main reason I like him is his music period. My husband can't stand him because he is too flamboyant. I go to his concerts he can go to mine and maybe he'll learn too lighten up and enjoy the show...(My husband in the car this week listening to my ipod) " Who is that I love this?" (Love Today the acoustic version) "It's Mika, you know the concert we are going too". He decides he suddenly hates it.... wait until I see him having a good time at the concert.....

 

Been long wanting to move to the UK myself....

[Loverrated]

My husband can't stand him because he is too flamboyant. My husband in the car this week listening to my ipod) " Who is that I love this?" (Love Today the acoustic version) "It's Mika, you know the concert we are going too". He decides he suddenly hates it.... wait until I see him having a good time at the concert.....

 

 

lol, yeah , wait until your husband see him live!! i'm pretty sure he will be having the time of his life no matter how hard it will be for him to admit it... I remember that cute boy who was a pure rocker, a tommy lee lookalike who was at mika's gig, after the show i heard him say to his friends " well i dont usually like dancey people you know me, but this guy is NOT DANCEY, he is really good!!! " i cant tell you how proud i was not only of mika who did an amizing concert but of this boy.... because mika rocks , he is raw and genuine and the whole world is learning from him....labels are OFF

[Mariasiv]

I know he will have a great time. He does this everytime I like someone's music that is a little different than what we always listen to.. Proving the point to me that we need to open our minds and forget the nonsense over here... BUt I can't wait:wink2:

[chickadee]

America sucks

 

I was waiting for something like this.

[chickadee]

Here's my detailed explanation on the matter--sorry if it turns into a bit of an essay.

 

America has, in all recent history, been a country divided by halves. North vs. South, Black vs. White, Conservative vs. Liberal. Over time, we have become very invested in this one-or-the-other world view, and equally invested in identifying and enforcing these divisions in order to preserve it as a means of preserving our perception of social order.

 

Look at our political spectrum--we are one of the few countries that has only two viable political parties, and people who refuse to choose to either the Republican or Democrat candidate are seen as almost traitors, as evinced by all the hostility that followed Ralph Nader voters over the past few elections. Other Western countries are far more comfortable with matters of nuance. We are not.

 

One of the divides that's particularly vital in American culture (and that is underlaid by a lot of panic) is the one between man and woman. Americans are very much uncomfortable when anything breaches that divide: we want our gender differences clearly marked and unassailable. As such, the position that homosexuality occupies in our popular culture is rather interesting. Americans en masse are still somewhat uneasy with homosexuality (since it so threatens perceived gender roles), but thanks to the after-effects of gay rights movements, it's been becoming more and more prominent in society--which, in some ways, makes it even more troubling for people, since it must now be acknowledged rather than ignored. Americans occupy a unique position here in relation to the rest of the world, where homosexuality and "feminine" behavior in men is either accepted with a lot less fuss (Britain, France), or else the culture as a whole is so conservative that it refuses to notice certain traits as being indicative of homosexuality unless absolutely forced to, and thus manages to coast by in blissful ignorance (Romania, Turkey). America, on the other hand, is both excessively sensitive to possible markers of homosexuality or gender difference, and also not particularly comfortable with it.

 

However, we have learned to make peace with male homosexuality in popular culture provided that it occupies a very specified, easily discerned and defined role.

 

"Acceptable" male homosexuality has been relegated to the sphere of "the feminine," and also the "asexual." The types of gay men that American pop culture embraces are the fashion designers, the stylists, interior decorators and chefs: all of these professions are generally designated as feminine, and none of these are especially sexually provocative. The job of such people is to make the lives of straight people more comfortable or interesting, and to help straight people better realize their sexual desires (in the case of hair stylists and fashion consultants), but the desires of the gay men can be conveniently removed from the field of thought, and chefs or interior decorators are not themselves considered to be particularly "sexy." When these gay men do express sexual desire for other men, it should be done in a joking way that would be funny for the straight audience, or else it should remain out of view and largely academic. Basically, America's decided that gay men are all right so long as they are there to serve for the straight people's use and entertainment. This is also why the amusingly camp, fussy, flamboyant homosexuals are especially favored on tv. (Additionally, flamboyance makes it easy to recognize these men as "gay" and "not a real man" so there is no danger of the aforementioned dreaded confusion between the feminine and the masculine.)

 

Now then, let's move from tv to music. The problem is that gay men's place in music is even more limited than their place in television. There are two main types of musicians: the rock star and the pop star. The rock star is not, in the American consciousness, compatible with "gay man," since a rock star should be swaggeringly masculine, while "gay man" is feminine. Obviously a lot of rock stars play with androgyny, but that's all right so long as they assert their heterosexuality be also being notorious womanizers.

 

The pop star is coded as more feminine--right now especially, the idea of "pop star" is most closely tied to women singers. But the problem with pop stars is that, as feminine, they are seen as sexually desirable--and sexually desirable to straight men--while as gay men (or men in general), in mass American consciousness, are not.

 

The only way that gay musicians can navigate this minefield is either by making their sexuality invisible (ie, acting in accordance to gender roles and also being so unremarkably asexual that their orientation becomes irrelevant), or to offer their sexuality up as a joke. Thus Rob Halford is able to be a "rock star" and gay, but his sexuality is also reduced to a joke among American audiences. And the Scissor Sisters are seen as pop stars, but also as a "gay novelty act"--so that the mass audiences can consider them amusing rather than sexy.

 

Where Mika enters into all of this is that neither his sexuality nor gender identity can be easily fit into this structure. He is a pop star, and male, and some aspects of his self-presentation code him in what Americans perceive as being sexually appealing in a feminine way--but without being able to put that under the label "gay." Meanwhile, since he keeps his sexuality secret, he is simultaneously seen as "sexy" to girls who hope he's straight. His stage theatrics, flamboyance in terms of dress, frequent use of falsetto, etc, mark him out as "feminine," but he refuses to either cement this categorization by admitting homosexuality or to deny it by publicly sleeping with groupies and being such an extreme womanizer that it would off-set his feminine image (like Prince). As long as he remains mum on his orientation, the tension of his sexual appeal and his more feminine characteristics cannot be defused and he cannot be dismissed as a joke, and this makes Americans very uncomfortable. His image and behavior, being unsuited for clear distinction between "masculine" and "feminine," "heterosexual" and "homosexual," is bothersome and threatening to American audiences and their neat conceptions of simple dualities, and so he is not accepted.

 

Since Mika seems neither willing to go and sleep with a bunch of girls in order to lay speculation about his homosexuality to rest, or to validate that speculation by admitting he is gay and allowing his sexuality to be reduced to a joke on the part of American media, it is not likely he will break America in a big way anytime soon.

 

Their loss.

 

--Jack

 

Wow! That was quite brilliant! Someone told me recently that you usually have something worthwhile to say. They weren't wrong!! *applause*