Nostalgia is a powerful force when it comes to how we recount our past, constructing beautiful non realities as we yearn for times not like our current. This force is amplified even further when it comes to how we view our childhoods, a simpler time when the world didn’t seem as scary and the systems the world relied upon seemed to work. While some of these assertions may contain a bit of truth, it often covers up the unwieldy fact that such a time period never existed in the first place. Hayden Anhedonia, known by her stage name Ethel Cain, plays with this nostalgia through her work and music videos that contest nostalgic senses of national pride found within America during the early 2000’s and questions what really made rural America special.Unlike many more left leaning depictions of rural America which often take the route of lampooning such communities as uninformed country bumpkins, Anhedonia offers a more sympathetic view, showing both the beauty and shortcomings of rural conservative America.
Ethel Cain’s music video for the aptly titled song American Teenager was the third single teased off of her album Preachers Daughter, and reflects on growing up in Bush’s rural america. The entire video is shot on an old camcorder without much thought given to professionalism, giving the entire video a grainy, spontaneous quality reminiscent of a home video. The homevideo feeling is amplified by the fact the video is shot entirely in Anhedonia’s small hometown of 7,000. This youthful atmosphere is captured in the various other nothings of youth, lazily riding a bike down a deserted street, hunching over the display of a convenience store, and hopping over fences circling the highschool football stadium. Yet, there is no sense of homecoming within any of these scenes. The novice recording, rather than evoking a sense of peaceful simplicity instead reinforces a sense of deterioration and passage of time as Ethel is only ever shown alone, making the stadium and streets look bare and forgotten. These various scenes create the idea that she can no longer return to these scenes of her childhood as a child. The cheerleader outfit she has on for much of it looks small and juvenile on her body, also heightened by the manifestation of her trans identity. The ideal image of a young, happy, popular, cisgender cheerleader is broken down in this way. The childhood we once yearned for can never come back, but Ethel also insinuates that it never existed in the way we might like to remember it either.
While not an explicit example of homonationalism, I think that the concept was certainly considered when the video and song were being produced. Homonationalism generates a shared culture in which one’s national identity, in this case that of the American, is made appealing through its comparison to other countries, many examples of which occurred during the myriad of justifications for the Iraq war between 2003-2011. This nationalism as the center of identity is harmful for many reasons, but Anhedonia through her artistic work and statements argues that it has resulted in a destruction of a small interpersonal community. The figure of the neighbor’s brother who died in overseas war is not scorned, but rather empathized with through the universality of the American dream we all hope for.
2 replies on “Small Town Kid or American Patriot: breaking down nostalgia within Ethel Cain’s American Teenager”
This is an interesting use of homonationalism through having Hayden appear within these nostalgic settings after her transition as a popular and cisgendered cheerleader, all while showing how such a past never existed. Unlike a critique, this acts more as a somber deconstruction of nationalism, both by showing how we cannot return to such a place again, and how it wasn’t exactly how we remember it. In this sense, nostalgia acts as a lens that permits us to perceive the past as a utopia of sorts, of an easier and better time than the present. However, rather than being a utopia that’s just out of reach, visible within the horizon, it is now seen behind us as fragments of memories as time passes and pushes us forward.
I loved that you analized American Teenager! I especially liked your line, “yet, there is no sense of homecoming within any of these scenes,” in describing the music video. I see the eeriness and discordant aspects of the video as an outright critique of nationalism and thus homonationalism as well. The lack of homecoming that you discussed seems to show how America is not what it claims to be, so why should we buy into American nationalism when it is literally killing us? As Hayden Anhedonia said in a statement to Pitchfork, the song American Teengaer was written as an expression of frustration with all the things the American teenager is supposed to be but never had any real chance of becoming, the patriotic notion of American exceptionalism that makes you think everything is achievable and that you should die trying.