Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/14/anyway-heres-wonder-woman.html
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Why is it that nearly every heavy metal type musician appears to be having intercourse with their instrument?
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Well, this video is definitely on the hardcore/explicit/sledghammer end of playing instrument==sex visual metaphor, but the cello in particular is a smooth, curvy, roughly body-sized and shaped object pressed firmly between splayed legs and vibrates and emanates warm, voice-like moaning tones. Even classical cellists often end up playing with full-on “O” face, closed eyes, swaying and rocking, and even lurching out of their seat as they reach their fingers down the neck onto the front of the body, down toward the f-holes to get those high notes to come out…alright, I’m gonna take a break…my wife’s a cellist, and if you’re watching somebody play who you are already intimately connected to, it’s hard not to see the sensuality of it…
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Obligatory, if predictable, when cellos are mentioned. (Give it 30 seconds to ‘warm up’ if you’ve not seen it before.)
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I love Yo-Yo Ma and he certainly doesn’t lack passion but I think I’d prefer to watch Tina Gou rock the cello any day of the week.
Does this make me shallow? Sexist? A musical Philistine?
Probably all of them. Still… [shrug]
Tina Guo gets flak in the comments of her videos for sexing it up (she appears nude, but just covered enough in the Skyrim song she does), so this is not isolated commentary. But it’s supposed to be kind of extreme and provocative to start with (I mean, it’s metal…)
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Yeah. It’s not a comment specifically about her. It’s a metal thing. Male and female metal musicians seem to do this regardless of the instrument.
Huh. I guess I’ve been playing cello wrong this whole time.
In all seriousness, this is a terrible video. So we know that most music videos the musicians are lip-syncing or bow-syncing or whatever. In a decent video, they’re actually playing or singing along to what they’ve already recorded, so you can actually see something resembling a real performance.
I guess for this video, the director or whoever decided that as long as it was sexy, nobody was going to care.
I dunno, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I actually like to see talented people play their instruments.
To be clear, I’m not objecting to making a sexy music video. I’m objecting to making a bad sexy music video. There’s basically no correlation between the music that you’re hearing and what she’s doing to the cello at any given time.
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Kinda feel the same. I loved how with Metalocalypse they both had great guitar playing for the show’s music, and the same guy laying down the licks was doing the animation, and tried to make the fingerwork accurate as well.
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The difference there being that in the Ma video he’s actually playing his cello. Gou is bow/finger-syncing and it’s not actually very well done. Now, her performance is good, although I take issue with some of her ornamentation, but that’s just me being a pedant and it would definitely sound better with a little less reverb.
If you enjoy Gou’s videos, good for you! As a semi-professional musician, I can’t not notice the little things that scream “fake” to me and it kind of kills it for me.
Also, nobody takes their good cello to the beach. Seriously.
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Yeah, I mean, I guess same comment from me. Rock and Metal is a provocative genre, and string instruments tend to be sort of phallic.
But come to think of it, if you can find someone who looks like they are making love to their trombone while they rock a solo, I’m in.
Ah, but the slopes are another matter.
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Anyway, here’s Wonder…
…oh thank God.
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Probably depends on your viewpoint. Apparently you’re a musician so it makes sense that you’d be more interested/concerned with the actual music and how the playing looked. I’m not and look at the entire video as a performance.
Plus not being a musician the inaccuracies in the video don’t bother me. Show me a portrayal of computer hackers in a movie or bad space physics and it will totally set me off. Everybody has their own area of geekdom. 
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Rock out with your…Uh.
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Well I’m glad we’ve moved beyond Wonder Woman as a sexual fantasy.
Oh.
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She’s wearing her g-string.
On the cello!
Wearing it out. Come on, people.
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In case it isn’t clear already, the cello is the most Metal of all orchestral instruments.
Just sayin’, if you’re gonna be pedantic about the bad sync job - visual choices like this are mainly on the video editor, even though the director gets final ok.
Still, I think it’s a great theme. One of the few that really stirs me emotionally, along with Ang Lee’s Hulk, or the theme to Ant-Man, which felt very descriptive.
Yeah, I get that it’s metal, being a metal fan. However…
I had to throw in Opeth. Sorry. They’re atypical of northern European metal bands, aren’t they?
So let’s do a GIS for “metal girl”.
OK, so not the top result, but damn near close.
Hell, let’s do a Getty image search for “man”. First page, damn near every picture is of guys in suits, or guys working, or guys having fun. No sexy, sexy men on the first page. Do a Getty image search for “woman”, and it’s mostly yoga, moms, joggers, pregnant women…oh, here it is…
I have kids. I have a daughter who wanted to learn violin because of Lindsey Stirling videos, and certainly her videos can be sensual.
But to me Guo’s videos, on top of it being annoying that she’s not actually playing in the videos, it’s this over the top *look at me, I’m a sexy woman, I’m acting like I’m having sexy sex with my cello look at me you want to have sex and be sexy with me let’s think about SEX boys!"
I’m not showing this video to my kids, unlike the Stirling videos. I don’t want to feed into the world’s message that they have no value unless they’re sexy.
So while metal tends to be fairly diverse behind the scenes (as diverse as a bunch of white folks can be) there’s that dynamic that is often hypermasculine but sometimes vaguely homoerotic with the guys, but the ladies tend to be a weirdly porny sexy.
And it’s a shame to me personally, since I’m actually a fan of metal with unconventional instruments.
I thought we were past this in the 90s for some reason. Not sure what bubble I was living in. Sorry, guys. I’m actually a fan of Guo’s music, but not her videos. If I want to see an Asian woman in a porny situation, I’ll watch porn.
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