Complex Muse

Sucker Punch Lolita

Jennifer Brigitte

Verse One:

Shoot me, darling,

Leave me for dead

We live in a crazed maze full of clowns

And you’re my psychic vampire

Breaking away from this madhouse

Filled with empty dreams and fantasies

I’m nothing but your animal

Locked inside a cage

Verse Two:

Every time you dream of me

I’m your sorceress

Fighting in a pantheon for your claim

You’re my king and I’m your queen

I’m not your private property

I’m not your baby doll you can own

Nor am I a prizefighter

Brawling inside your sprawling ring of fire

Bridge:

You’ve got nowhere to hide

You’ve got no room left inside

I’m like your Virgin Bride

Defiled by your very game

I need to kill my darling

I remember every time

Your fist was pressed against my face

Chorus

I’m ready for a new start

Cut the strings from under your legs

I’m not your victim anymore

Take the veil from off my eyes

I’m sick of lying about your filthy fantasies

There’s nowhere to hide

Slash the dirty deeds from coming in

I’m not your punching bag

No more running away from the hell

You’ve sucked me in

Say goodbye to your sick cycle dirty dreams

I’m not giving in

Verse Three:

It’s been said and done

When a woman loses her love

It’s already gone

And there’s no kind of feeling

To bring it back

So set me free

And let it be

Because is already been sung

Verse Four:

Time will tell when you shall learn

How to treat your woman with respect

One by one to the tee

I wrote down your name inside my little black book

Hoping one day I can do

The same things you’ve done to me

For every time you lay that finger on me

Bridge Repeat

Chorus Repeat

Verse Six:

I’m already gone

Don’t try to fight it anymore

Because you never wanted my love

You never gave a damn about me

You would sell my soul

For a panicle of success

Driven by your lack of sex

The truth will set you free

You just wait and see

I’m not an anatomically incorrect doll

End Verse:

I gave you my soul

But you didn’t want it anyway

I’m pulling through

I bet you never thought I would

But I got to see this story come to a close

The end is near

There’s nowhere to hide

All bets are off

I’m coming for you

You took away my control

So I put a bullet in between your eyes

Linkin Park unveils logo after the death of Chester Bennington:

Ten days after the sudden heartbreaking suicide of Chester Bennington, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park unveiled the group’s new logo. What was once a close hexagon with each side representing the members of the band, we know have an open-wounded hexagon with one of the sides missing. Forever will the hexagon be open to the vacuum Bennington’s departure left this group. All around the world, we miss the heavy words that now consume the pain of this Nu Metal icon. Our hearts go out to Chester, his family and friends, and the fans that loved him. Goodnight, sweet Chester.  

Sex and the City and Carrie Bradshaw: The New Working Woman

When Sex and the City first premiered back in 1998, the idea of four women sharing moments of their lives together was a revolutionary thought. Although its predecessor, The Golden Girls, had left the airwaves in 1992, SATC was the HBO phenomenon with a younger Gen-X approach of the NBC show with a twist. While The Golden Girls had to be clever in their dialogue to conceal the raunchier moments and discussion in order to avoid the censors’ wrath, these New York City gals spilled the juice in just about every little mundane detail of their lives.

We watched them make love, fall in love, breakup, have babies, get married, get divorced, and through it all they picked up the pieces to their friendship. I realized as a young girl how much my personality was like Carrie Bradshaw. The strong-willed empowered romantic that was both flawlessly magical and a flawed human was my guide to humanity. She wasn’t perfect, not by a longshot. She had notoriously stupid moments but in her center, she was fiercely loyal to anybody she loved. Unfortunately, she was flighty to those she was never in love with.

She was a feminist hero because she never wanted to be one. Bradshaw never proclaimed to be a staple of a working-class American shero. Hell, this woman would rather buy a pair of Manolo Blahnik’s vs. having a home. Yet she was introspective to a fault. She understood the people around as if she were Alice and peaking through the looking glass. And like Alice, Carrie gave good advice that she very seldom used it.

The sassy stylish New York single girl icon was at the core looking for love in a hopeless place. In order to find love, she needed to discover herself. Much like her friends, Carrie knew that the only way she could find that happiness is by being open to the realities she finds herself. The guts come from having feminist figures of their day sitting around the table to openly discuss and debate about the men that center their lives. It’s a groundbreaking concept that doesn’t strip the romance away from their empowerment but embraces the romanticism of their crusade.

The feminism of this show is that up until 1998, the discussions between the battles and entanglements of the same and opposite sexes were absolutely taboo. It was sarcastic without the cynicism of Daria. It was hyper-sexualized without looking like it belonged on Skinimax. It was fresh like an open wound. We, the purveyor, felt like a fly on the wall as they discussed what was happening in our own lives. And best of all, we weren’t watching yuppie 20-somethings struggling in New York like those six friends over at NBC but 30-something women past their prime and past the decade of inexperience. They’ve now entered the decade of exploration and self-discovery.

They expressed how they felt. They fucked like men while finding Mr. Right but in the between, they said yes to Mr. Right Nows. 

What I loved about Carrie was that she was Zelda Fitzgerald of her generation. Prolific male writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jack Kerouac among others explored the sexual fantasies and realities they saw through their many lives but to openly have sexuality discussed in the female perspective was breaking out of the traditional matriarchal archetypes. She wasn’t a manic pixie girl or the representation of motherhood. Bradshaw was the navigator of her own story. She was the “City” in itself. A Holden Caulfield figure in fabulous clothes and even better shoes.

She was what she read: a Cosmopolitan female in vogue and a-la-mode. She was unafraid to show her true self. Her mentality is similar to mine. I can flirt, seduce, think, feel, express, consume, love, and hate like a man because we aren’t that different. The lines end with genitalia. Mentally, I don’t have to suppress my emotions to show my superiority and I don’t have to relinquish rationale to blend in. I can be whoever I want to be and have a voice to prove that to strangers I may never even meet. 

Carrie Bradshaw didn’t have to be like Daria Morgendorffer to be seen as a great literary female thinker in pop culture. She would wear flower pins, Manolos over Japanese schoolgirl stalkings, and wear her long untameable head of golden curls down but she was reflective of a real woman who was full of life and wisdom. Sometimes being the wisest one in the room means you may very well be the one prone to make the most mistakes.

Carrie represents the women in decision ready to make that transition from peering through the looking glass with a world of curiosity in between her eyes and the woman with the sagacity to dominate her terrain.  

GLOW: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, the Welcoming of the Awakened Woman

GLOW, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling is the new Netflix program that is breathtakingly charming and quintessential to finding ourselves in the midst of struggle and adversity. It’s also a poignant look at the deconstruction of stereotypes in a hyper masculine and sexist world of the 80s. It dismantles the objectification of the power women who struggle with the societal roles put on them by giving them free reign to express their bodies in ways they’ve never thought before. 

What we have is a storyline where we move past the inciting moment, struggling actress Ruth Wilder destroys the marriage and friendship of her friend, former soap opera star Debbie Eagan. That’s where the fodder for the crumbling of the patriarchal wall begins.

The women, both at the opposite spectrums of motherhood, find themselves at the crux of therapy. Their outlets to release their anger and frustrations are smashed inside the wrestling ring. 

We see women hitting with insecurities realizing they can’t do this alone. That there’s a sisterhood waiting to back you up no matter what.
Alison Brie from Community shines as the wildly eager damaged actress, Ruth Wilder. Her wild talent from singing an unhinged rendition of a Barbra Streisand song, her Soviet Union accents, her dramatic bravado, down to the physical comedy proved to be the cement of the show’s trinity. Leading with her are the brilliance and subtlety of wildly prolific comic and writer Marc Maron (Sam Sylvia) and Betty Gilpin. 

Gilpin plays the Stepford American Pie sorority girl turned disillusioned housewife to perfection. Her sickly desperation to being an independent woman to a false confident diva to the Liberty Belle she always was deep down was both poignant and exhaustingly painful to watch at the same time. Many women sabotaged themselves from the happiness they don’t think they deserve and in the last episode, we almost see her go through that but in that split second decision, the notion of reverting back to the woman she became— something vile she couldn’t even talk to—- is magical.

We also have many standouts in the likes of Carmen (Britney Young), Justine (Britt Baron), Gayle Rankin (Sheila the She-Wolf), and the man who went on the line to make GLOW happen, Sam Bash (Chris Lowell).

Each of the characters moved in a way I didn’t think would. Carmen stands up to her father, brothers, and the patriarchal system that led her to anxiety attacks and stage freight. She never let that attack her character. Her personality was strong, positive, and nurturing. Her scenes with Sam Bash, the James Spader party boy, absolutely deconstructs him in a way we never thought we were going to see. At first, we’re led to believe this charming cocaine friendly yuppie had some lascivious plans besides creating GLOW but then you realize that despite his wealth, he truly was a wrestling fanatic who’s dream was to make it accessible for women.

He empowered the girls and made them find themselves in the creation of their stereotypes. He recognized the show Sam originally brought to him was complete crap and that there didn’t need to be a scripted show when these girls’ personalities are strong enough to lead a subversive show about the prejudicial expectations placed on women and how we too can play in the man’s world. Sam is seen going head-to-toe with his mother to believe in him, that he finally found what he had been searching for his entire life.

In the same ways, Justine and Sheila share that too. Justine traced her long lost father all the way down and joined his debauched misogynistic world to break down his walls. Justine obsessively lurks around movie director Sam around like a lost puppy, to the point where innocently believes she’s a stalkerish fangirl. Her arc on the show goes full circle when Sam and she realize their instant pure connection which in terms helps the lost wild goose man his place in the world.
Finally, Sheila’s scene where the lone wolf finally feels accepted by her pack of wolves on her birthday is the moment when you realize the show is all about finding yourself in an isolating cruel world doesn’t mean you have to do it all alone. When she howls, they howl with her, together, like sisters. 

GLOW is a show made for the Complex Muse team. It’s a show that at its core means we can do anything and be everything we want to be. There’s no iron curtain or window of time for success. Only the cynical sycophantic vultures believe they know how we are supposed to live.

In the end, GLOW is about finding the character that truly belongs to us and sticking to it.

A Wrinkle in Time, the 1963 masterpiece children’s science fiction novel written by prolific Christian author, the late Madeleine L'Engle, has been adapted by phenom female director Ava DuVernay (Selma, 13th). DuVernay is the first black female director to helm a $100 million dollar Hollywood blockbuster.

A Wrinkle in Time took the teachings of C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia) and turned them on a spin. Her more liberal teachings of Christianity didn’t bode well with more fundamental Christians who protested against the major themes of the brilliant novel.

In the novel, L’Engle discusses the battle of good vs. evil as the battle of light vs. darkness. They recognize the roles that children have in the future of our planet and how the cosmic beings of the light guide them to find the protectors to help the fight of prevailing darkness. The children find the Messianic figures that have been Earthlings in philosophers, not in gods. Jesus is with Budah as well as DaVinci, Shakespeare, Einstein, Bach, and Gandhi. Together they children join forces with them to fight The Dark Thing.

These themes radically influenced authors and filmmakers such as George Lucas in his larger-than-life creation, Star Wars, and Philip K. Dick in Do Androids Sleep of Electric Sheep or better known as Blade Runner mainstreamed by Ridley Scott. 

The concept of the Tesseract is important in the themes of the novel.  The tesseract is the four-dimensional analog of the cube. In A Wrinkle in Time, we learn the Megan Murry has to travel to the fifth dimension to save her scientist father who is being kept in the darkness. The five dimensions are: linear (first), square (second), cube (third), Einstein’s concept of time (fourth), and tesseract (fifth). Her concepts of time and space, entering the wormhole resembles that of a twin paradox.  A wormhole is a theoretical passage through space-time that could create shortcuts for long journeys across the universe. Wormholes are predicted by the theory of general relativity. Wormholes bring with them the dangers of sudden collapse, high radiation and dangerous contact with exotic matter. 

The twin paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity involving identical twins, one of whom makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find that the twin who remained on Earth has aged more, thus the returning twin is now the younger twin of the two.

Everything, in theory, is a direct consequence of relativity and that’s the magic of A Wrinkle in Time. The idea that in every social circle we are presented with the superiority and inferiority complexes that shape and mold the perception of power in this universe. In every group, there are those that challenge the minority groups and the status quo, and it is up to us to be a part of the resistance against peer-pressured superiority. Social class is nothing more than a feudalistic attempt to hold power over a group and dominate their every way of life. 

In the novel, we also explore that humans cannot be whole without the juxtaposition of pragmatism and romanticism (rationality and creativity). When the Ws challenge Meg and her friends to come up with a list of fighters, she sees life in a rational direction that there’s no counterpoint to logic. She is in her comfort zone and life doesn’t always work in predictability. We need to find the happy medium in all of us as wisely manifested in the Happy Medium, an amalgamation as told by Mrs. Murry.

Fix You: Chester Bennington (1976-2017)

During my formative high school years, I was verging on the darkness that nobody seemed to care to understand. I was a rebel. I was a spoiled brat. I was a rude, thoughtless little pig. I was everything you didn’t want me to be. I was living in the captivity of a false Christ and the indoctrinators from Hell. I was a miserable little twat. 

And I wanted to die.

I dreamed of a future.

I dreamed for a salvation.

And I prayed for a suicide.

In those four years of perpetual solitude, inside my private Idaho, I was stuck in Purgatory. But during those years, the Slytherin sounds of Chester Bennington woke me up.

He told me that there was such a thing as being “Numb,” numb to the feelings of losing faith in your own humanity.The prophet that taught a generation to break our habit of pain and self-destruction through himself of the ledge he perched against the age for so many reckless and successful years.

It’s hard to think that I, like so many, got saved just by listening to your pain and to think that your mission in life was to make sure we didn’t end up like you. Those words now become a spoken and seen truth. It’s an act of rebellion that should have stayed traditional. Nobody wanted you to fade into the darkness for which you shined a light to so many.

If we only knew you were going to jump, you were going to run, we could have blanket you with all our love.

But that’s the fantasy girl that lives inside of me, thinking I could save a man I never knew. Love is not enough and it’s time we see the truth about it.

He hurt inside in ways we can’t even fathom nor describe. The writings were on the wall but there was no inspection, just faint introspection.

Bennington’s death is a collapse of my motto, “The children will be alright." 

How could we? The fight we had with ourselves seems foolish when one of our idols couldn’t break the habit himself.

But the fact of the matter is that on July 20, on the day in which the first man landed on the moon and what would have been the 53rd birthday of your best friend, Chris Cornell, you were found hanging in your own home. 

A rush of blood to the head and that voice was lost forever.

Just know the memories of your salvation will never fade away. Thank you for the music.

Rest in Peace, Chester.