{"id":433,"date":"2025-06-03T22:22:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T22:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=433"},"modified":"2025-06-03T22:25:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T22:25:28","slug":"representation-of-the-american-dream-in-marinas-hollywood-and-mitskis-your-best-american-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=433","title":{"rendered":"Representation of The American Dream in MARINA\u2019s \u201cHollywood\u201d and Mitski\u2019s \u201cYour Best American Girl\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A woman with her lips painted bright red sensually blows out a candle as the camera pans out to reveal its position atop a cake decorated to look like the American flag. As the woman sings the words \u201cAmerican queen is the American dream\u201d over the cake\u2014interspersed with shots of young people frollicking and partying outside of a large white house\u2014she paints a stark picture of American patriotism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After the group presentation last week that discussed representations of America in music videos, I became curious about how America, the American Dream, and neoliberalism are represented from an outside perspective. This opening to \u201cHollywood\u201d by Welsh singer MARINA (also known as Marina and the Diamonds) provides a stunning visual endorsement of the American dream. Throughout the video, MARINA dances through a large house wearing a variety of American flag themed outfits while partying, waving flags, and joyously indulging in her representation of the ideal Hollywood lifestyle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Despite the video\u2019s visual affirmation of the glamour of the American dream, MARINA\u2019s lyrics paint a different picture of America. She sings about a hostess on her flight to the US \u201ctrying to stimulate a mind \/ that is slowly starting to decay\u201d while reading a gossip magazine, singing to her \u201cHollywood infected your brain\u201d and that she has been \u201cpuking American dreams\u201d in the chorus. Her lyrics throw jabs like these at the vapid and materialistic nature of America and her conception of the American dream throughout the song. However, the clash between MARINA\u2019s lyricism and the visuals of her music video communicate an important message: MARINA cannot help buying into the American dream\u2014being \u201cObsessed with the mess that\u2019s America\u201d\u2014because she fits the narrow vision of who the American dream is imagined for. She recognizes in her lyrics that she bears the privilege of fitting the image of an American celebrity or movie star, singing about being compared to Shakira and Catherine Zeta Jones. She cannot help but bite into the idea of the American dream, even as she criticizes it, because she knows that she can fit the vision of the \u201cAmerican queen\u201d that she sings about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This music video contrasts starkly with the video for Mitski\u2019s \u201cYour Best American Girl.\u201d At the opening of the video, Miski sits propped on a chair as a crew neatens her outfit and fusses over applying bits of hairspray to her before she suddenly locks eyes with a man across from her. The two exchange flirtatious glances, smiles, and waves. As Mitski blushes and waves shyly, a white woman dressed in jean shorts and wearing a flower crown\u2014the picture of an ideal All-American girl\u2014approaches the man and the two start flirtatiously touching as the smile drops from Mitski\u2019s face. As the two of them flirt and eventually progress to making out, Mitski turns to her own hand, sensually kissing and caressing it as shots of Mitski on her own contrast with shots of the couple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the background of shots of Mitski and the couple, she sings \u201cAnd you\u2019re an all-American boy \/ I guess I couldn\u2019t help trying to be your best American girl.\u201d As the video progresses, the couple becomes progressively more intimate and unclothed, eventually wrapping themselves in nothing but an American flag as Mitski plays guitar on her own. This juxtaposition between Mitski on her own and the couple shrouded in the flag, along with the lyrics, signal that this couple represents the American dream that Mitskii has been excluded from. As a Japanese-American, Mitski has grown up being caught between both her American birthplace and her Japanese heritage and close relationship with her Japanese ancestry. She laments in the song, \u201cYour mother wouldn\u2019t approve of how my mother raised me \/ but I do,\u201d both illustrating the distance between her upbringing and that of this all-American boy and her refusal to shun her upbringing in order to fit into an American ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Like MARINA, Mitski presents a story of aspiration of fitting into the narrative of the American dream as an outsider. Both simultaneously critique the American dream while singing about how they cannot help but reach for it. They demonstrate how culture has become so saturated with idealization of what is offered to those who fit the “all-American” ideal that, even in critiquing it and having some kind of distanced viewpoint, they cannot help but participate in the kind of behaviors and consumption that bring them closer to it. However, while MARINA\u2019s video presents a story of someone who has been accepted into this ideal, in part because of her whiteness and conformity to American beauty standards, Mitski\u2019s illustrates how this ideal remains exclusionary for those who do not fit the image of a \u201cbest American girl.\u201d In contrast with MARINA’s video, which critiques America while providing a visual endorsement of the American dream, Mitski sings about aspiring towards an “all-American” ideal while visually representing this impossibility for her. No matter what she does or how much she tries to be an all-American girl like her counterpart in the video, even having a team of stylists fuss over her, she remains on the outside looking in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman with her lips painted bright red sensually blows out a candle as the camera pans out to reveal its position atop a cake decorated to look like the American flag. As the woman sings the words \u201cAmerican queen is the American dream\u201d over the cake\u2014interspersed with shots of young people frollicking and partying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}