{"id":25323,"date":"2024-12-13T22:59:47","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T22:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=25323"},"modified":"2024-12-13T23:48:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T23:48:14","slug":"music-media-morals-the-changing-face-of-jonis-don-juans-reckless-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=25323","title":{"rendered":"MUSiC, MEDiA & MORALS: The Changing Face of Joni\u2019s Don Juan\u2019s Reckless Daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
The original album cover.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m \u2018friends\u2019 with Joni Mitchell \u2018official\u2019, on Facebook. A recent post from her concerns a re-release of Don Juan\u2019s Reckless Daughter<\/em>. I had the temerity to say, in a comment on the post, that I much prefer the original cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, no surprise, some pious person has taken a potshot, referring to the original cover as a \u2018racist caricature\u2019. Oh dear, humanity may well be screwed, if we\u2019re all really that dim witted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The \u2018safe\u2019\/neutered modern replacement.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The replacement cover image is taken from photo sessions for the Dog Eat Dog<\/em> album cover, when Joni, by now with Larry Klein, was going all \u201880s: perm, power dressing suit style garb, and lyrics railing against the Reaganomic (or Thatcherite, here in the UK) cultural drift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To use such an image is to Bowdlerise and misrepresent<\/em> the people and the times that produced the wonderful music of Don Juan<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is, ironically, a triumph for the kind of shallow lying pop culture Joni bemoans on Dog Eat Dog<\/em>. It is populist simplicity airbrushing over messy history, to make it conform with modern ideas\/ideals. And to make money, of course. That justifies all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a form of Capitalo-Stalinism, pretending to be morally sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Get Out Of The Kitchen<\/em>, Joni Mitchell.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This article<\/a>, about Joni and Don Alias, is interesting\u2026 And there\u2019s a very<\/em> interesting story about the painting shown above. Joni painted Don\u2026 with an erection!* He felt uncomfortable about this, and requested she remove it (not his actual willy<\/em>, but the painted one\u2026 um, she hadn\u2019t painted his\u2026this could get weird). So she did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Joni\u2019s choice to \u2018black up\u2018, as the character \u2018Art Nouveau\u2019, for the cover of Don Juan<\/em>. More on this shortly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if the history re-writers want to be properly thorough, they should change Don Juan<\/em>, in the title, as well, while they\u2019re at it. He was, after all, probably a fiction, of Carlos Castaneda\u2019s imagining. A \u2018racist caricature\u2019, by the terms of this genuine \u2018PC gone mad\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Art Nouveau<\/em>, Henry Diltz, 1976.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The genesis of Art Nouveau may be revealed here<\/a>, in an intriguing BBC News piece. That\u2019s definitely worth a read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, back to now; the madhouse that is America under Trump will be keen – \u2018manifest density\u2019, and all that – to export their moral superiority, no doubt. The kind that floods the world with porn, but won\u2019t allow an erect penis to be seen in any other way than covertly, in furtive shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But violence? They\u2019ll deregulate violence, both real and imaginary, such that this sort of thing (see below) becomes a laudable comic romp, sanctified by its economic success:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Terrifier<\/em>, a gorenography franchise wet dream.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The virile member? No way. The pornography of violence, yes please!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most grotesque ironies in this vomiting forth of simplicity, ignorance and subterfuge, is how the so-called \u2018woke\u2019 agenda has been embraced by the ultra-capitalist machinery of advertising. Such that we\u2019re drowning in a tsunami of smiling mixed-race couples, or under\/over-represented minorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The effect – driven not by a quest to improve the world, but the urge to create yet more sales\/wealth – is often not to promote tolerance and understanding, but to stoke petty discontents into smouldering hatreds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Art Nouveau at Lee Sklar\u2019s Halloween party, 1976, Henry Diltz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But back to Joni, and Don Juan<\/em>. I think it\u2019s tragic that her inspired cover artwork has been vandalised by the myopic execs of current times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Unholy shit\u2026 what\u2019s he\/she saying?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This second image of Art Nouveau must be causing apoplexy across the whole spectrum. What\u2019s that he\/she is saying? Holy Baby Jesu with a Kalshnikov! Maybe the execs could rescue it all with an appeal to \u2018trans-rights\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To boil the whole debacle down into suitably facile contemporary parlance\u2026 FFS!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fabulous art by Joni.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

FOOTNOTE<\/strong> – Execs Censoring Artists!?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sidewalk is a history book
And a circus
Dangerous clowns
Balancing dreadful and wonderful perceptions
They have been handed
Day by day
Generations on down<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The above are a few lines from Joni\u2019s lyrics to Charlie Mingus\u2019 \u2018Goodbye Pork Pie Hat\u2019. Are the kind of folk who changed her record cover going to take a hatchet to her lyrics? Are penny-pinching dullards to censure\/censor the poetic insights of artists!?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m \u2018friends\u2019 with Joni Mitchell \u2018official\u2019, on Facebook. A recent post from her concerns a re-release of Don Juan\u2019s Reckless Daughter. I had the temerity to say, in a comment on the post, that I much prefer the original cover. And, no surprise, some pious person has taken a potshot, referring to the original cover … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “MUSiC, MEDiA & MORALS: The Changing Face of Joni\u2019s Don Juan\u2019s Reckless Daughter”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-6Ar","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25323"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25323"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25334,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25323\/revisions\/25334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}