The Green Day Fangirls' Confessions Thread

[Virginia Lot Lizard]

28 minutes ago, Little Boy Named Booze said:

yeah Lou Taylor Pucci is a bad actor. Only 47 credits on IMDB. And known for his role in Evil Dead and You (series TV)
What a shame.
 

Overacted story line. Over 10 minutes of a Green Day video of no Green Day. It could have been so much more.

[Little Boy Named Booze]

4 minutes ago, Virginia Lot Lizard said:

Over 10 minutes of a Green Day video of no Green Day. 

Who care? I just want a good video and a good song. I don't care not seeing Billie Joe. I'm not fangirling over him like a freak lol 

[pacejunkie punk]

50 minutes ago, Hermione said:

Their worst video is Jesus of Suburbia. The cringe!!! WMUWSE a close second.

Oh Love and HCTS are both fun, and HCTS is totally wholesome and fits the positive message of the song well.

What saved WMUWSE from being the worst are those awesome performance shots though.  I wish they’d release a cut of just that studio part where they perform because damn they all look good and I love that Jason’s in it. That shot of Billie looking up is just 👀 🔥 

[The Grohl]

I also hate WMUWSE video. I have never liked it. Sure, the story is important but it's just boring. And I hate the acting at the beginning. 

I have no qualms about JOS. Then again I had a huge crush on the guy playing St Jimmy so.... I'd much rather this JOS than WMUWSE or HCTS and especially Oh love.

As for which is worse, Oh Love or HCTS...that's sooo hard. Oh Love actually has Green Day but makes me cringe. HCTS is just boring. Honestly I think I could tolerate HCTS more. Oh Love is way too cringe and just weird. HCTS is at least more within their wheelhouse.

[Virginia Lot Lizard]

29 minutes ago, The Grohl said:

I also hate WMUWSE video. I have never liked it. Sure, the story is important but it's just boring. And I hate the acting at the beginning. 

I have no qualms about JOS. Then again I had a huge crush on the guy playing St Jimmy so.... I'd much rather this JOS than WMUWSE or HCTS and especially Oh love.

As for which is worse, Oh Love or HCTS...that's sooo hard. Oh Love actually has Green Day but makes me cringe. HCTS is just boring. Honestly I think I could tolerate HCTS more. Oh Love is way too cringe and just weird. HCTS is at least more within their wheelhouse.

Maybe kinda hard to get the band and then crew etc together at that time to make a video at the time HCTS was released. Here Comes the Shock is promoting Punk Rock Aerobics you can do at home during the pandemic if you can’t get out much. That’s not bad at all. It could be kind of helpful to some people to check out Hilken Mancini and other Punk Rock Aerobics videos.

The past couple of years have been a time for a different approach to the everyday. 

[pacejunkie punk]

6 minutes ago, Virginia Lot Lizard said:

Maybe kinda hard to get the band and then crew etc together at that time to make a video at the time HCTS was released. Here Comes the Shock is promoting punk rock aerobics you can do at home during the pandemic if you can’t get out much. That’s not bad at all. It could be kind of helpful to some people to check out Hilken Mancini and other punk rock aerobics videos.

The past couple of years have been a time for a different approach to the everyday. 

Not sure why it would have been a problem when they did it for all those Network videos

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, The Grohl said:

I also hate WMUWSE video. I have never liked it. Sure, the story is important but it's just boring. And I hate the acting at the beginning. 

I have no qualms about JOS. Then again I had a huge crush on the guy playing St Jimmy so.... I'd much rather this JOS than WMUWSE or HCTS and especially Oh love.

As for which is worse, Oh Love or HCTS...that's sooo hard. Oh Love actually has Green Day but makes me cringe. HCTS is just boring. Honestly I think I could tolerate HCTS more. Oh Love is way too cringe and just weird. HCTS is at least more within their wheelhouse.

I was about to say the St. Jimmy guy is smokin' hot LOL.

[The Grohl]

5 minutes ago, Lady Mix-A-Lot said:

I was about to say the St. Jimmy guy is smokin' hot LOL.

You understand!! 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Hermione said:

I just hate it because I don't see how emos posing around, being abusive to their parents for no reason, vandalising stores and cutting their wrists to be cool reflects anything about Billie's youth/the Bay Area punk scene that seemed to actually have worthwhile values which the song refers to. Like, youth rebellion can be shown without being super cringe. I think it was the first Green Day video I waited for and I was very disappointed by it lol. Director's fault though not the actors.

I don't think it is supposed to show Billie's youth though. It's supposed to show someone who is so disillusioned with a dysfunctional society that they have turned to destructive behavior. It's not supposed to be positive or promoting such behavior; it's supposed to point out a problem.

[Little Boy Named Booze]

The AI musical on Broadway explains it very well. It's not necessarily about youth rebellion.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Little Boy Named Booze said:

The AI musical on Broadway explains it very well. It's not necessarily about youth rebellion.

THANK YOU

[jengd]

4 hours ago, Lady Mix-A-Lot said:

OK, it's my turn to talk about things that matter to me again LOL. First, let me be clear that this is not a personal disagreement; I just want to talk about my take on the video and the issues underlying it. This why I think the video is bold: when we see scantily class women in entertainment, they are almost always portrayed entertaining men. This video flips the script and the women become the audience, watching men for their own enjoyment. The interaction between the women and the men feels secondary, and when it does happen, it feels more reciprocal than typical portrayals, and the women seem to actually be in the power position (Tre seems the most interactive here, and he gets a pass because he was not married when this video was made LOL). I view it as a pretty subversive piece. I think it says something about all of our cultural conditioning that, when we see women being sexual on their own rather than sexualized solely by men, our reaction is "Ew, trashy/gross/etc." We usually don't say the same thing about men being sexual or consuming sexual content. My only real criticism of the video is that it does not seem to match the song: the video is kinda party-esque whereas the song is about loneliness. Maybe they were trying to be ironic? Not sure, but on the whole I do think it is a positive piece.

I largely agree with you and find non GD fans just think it’s a fun Rick video with girls in but I think for those of us who are deeper into the band, it just doesn’t feel like a good fit, particularly for Billie as such a family man. I think some of others talked about here have just aged badly which is very common for music videos.  The long version of WMUWSE was just too awful but that was totally a thing at the time.  I think @pacejunkie punk said part and I totally agree, whole video like that please instead of cringed melodrama!  
 

HCTS was a great warm up video during lockdown 😂😂

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, jengd said:

I largely agree with you and find non GD fans just think it’s a fun Rick video with girls in but I think for those of us who are deeper into the band, it just doesn’t feel like a good fit, particularly for Billie as such a family man. I think some of others talked about here have just aged badly which is very common for music videos.  The long version of WMUWSE was just too awful but that was totally a thing at the time.  I think @pacejunkie punk said part and I totally agree, whole video like that please instead of cringed melodrama!  
 

HCTS was a great warm up video during lockdown 😂😂

I guess I am just not understanding what would be problematic or aging poorly about the video. Speaking broadly here (not about you), it always feels like people get upset and start screaming "problematic" when they see consensual sexual stuff while at the same time ignoring all the insidious ways rape culture creeps into popular culture. Everything in this video appears very consensual and as I stated above, the women really seem to have the upper hand here. I actually don't know what Billie being a family man has to do with this. Billie isn't the one interacting much with the models--Tre is the only one really getting handsy, which is fine since he was not married at the time, and again it all appears fully consensual. I would go a step further and argue that sex positivity and the promotion of consensual acts between adults IS a "family value." I think this is very much in line with the band's ideals of tolerance and progressivism, and I agree that there is much deeper social commentary here beyond just, "Look everybody! Half-naked women!"

[Squashie]

39 minutes ago, Lady Mix-A-Lot said:

I guess I am just not understanding what would be problematic or aging poorly about the video. Speaking broadly here (not about you), it always feels like people get upset and start screaming "problematic" when they see consensual sexual stuff while at the same time ignoring all the insidious ways rape culture creeps into popular culture. Everything in this video appears very consensual and as I stated above, the women really seem to have the upper hand here. I actually don't know what Billie being a family man has to do with this. Billie isn't the one interacting much with the models--Tre is the only one really getting handsy, which is fine since he was not married at the time, and again it all appears fully consensual. I would go a step further and argue that sex positivity and the promotion of consensual acts between adults IS a "family value." I think this is very much in line with the band's ideals of tolerance and progressivism, and I agree that there is much deeper social commentary here beyond just, "Look everybody! Half-naked women!"

It's cliche "sex, drugs & rock 'n roll". There is nothing progressive about the video. And of course the girls are "consenting." It's the role they are being paid to play.

I invite you to watch the bts of the video:

 

[Virginia Lot Lizard]

As much as I really don’t mind the video for Oh Love, I do wish it was for a different song or didn’t exist at all if it wasn’t going to be executed properly. Oh Love is one of those pulling at heart strings songs and fortunately this video for this song misses the mark entirely. 

One good thing is we’re still talking about the Trilogy all these years later even though the band band won’t play these songs. A lot of great songs on the Trilogy.

Oh Love (the song) got muddled up in some backlash it didn’t deserve. The whole Trilogy did. It’s really unfair. Those songs meant a lot to a of people.

[Little Boy Named Booze]

We kind of knew they fucked it up right at the start of the trilogy with the old school 3D glasses for the lyrics video

[The Grohl]

1 hour ago, Little Boy Named Booze said:

We kind of knew they fucked it up right at the start of the trilogy with the old school 3D glasses for the lyrics video

They fucked it up right at the start by making Oh Love the lead single

[Beerjeezus]

7 hours ago, Lady Mix-A-Lot said:

OK, it's my turn to talk about things that matter to me again LOL. First, let me be clear that this is not a personal disagreement; I just want to talk about my take on the video and the issues underlying it. This why I think the video is bold: when we see scantily class women in entertainment, they are almost always portrayed entertaining men. This video flips the script and the women become the audience, watching men for their own enjoyment. The interaction between the women and the men feels secondary, and when it does happen, it feels more reciprocal than typical portrayals, and the women seem to actually be in the power position (Tre seems the most interactive here, and he gets a pass because he was not married when this video was made LOL). I view it as a pretty subversive piece. I think it says something about all of our cultural conditioning that, when we see women being sexual on their own rather than sexualized solely by men, our reaction is "Ew, trashy/gross/etc." We usually don't say the same thing about men being sexual or consuming sexual content. My only real criticism of the video is that it does not seem to match the song: the video is kinda party-esque whereas the song is about loneliness. Maybe they were trying to be ironic? Not sure, but on the whole I do think it is a positive piece.

Look what a walking contradiction I am, because here I go engaging in an internet debate!

I think the way you view the video is very creative and interesting. What makes most of us understand it the other way around is the way it’s filmed with the focus on women’s bodies, their scant clothing etc... aka the so-called male gaze. It seems to me that this way of filming takes the focus away from the fact that it’s the women who are actually watching (quite literally, considering that  we’re having this conversation in a thread dedicated to talking about men’s bodies - I think that’s an interesting aspect of fan culture but that’s for another time), but you could very well argue that it’s an interesting juxtaposition (even though I think that’s way too smart from Sam Beyer and he probably did it accidentally while all he wanted to portay were rockstars and The Boobs ). 

You reminded me of this video Lindsay Ellis made about the way Megan Fox’s character is portrayed in the Transformers movies vs. the way it’s written in the script. Here it is if you’re interested.

 

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Squashie said:

It's cliche "sex, drugs & rock 'n roll". There is nothing progressive about the video. And of course the girls are "consenting." It's the role they are being paid to play.

I invite you to watch the bts of the video:

 

Yes, they are being paid to play a role. But that is a line of work they willingly chose to go into. Maybe this is actually their dream job. Are you implying that a sex worker can never be consenting because they are being paid? (BTW, I have mixed views on sex work, especially prostitution because the vast majority of prostitutes are trafficking victims and thus are NOT consenting. But many people do porn acting, for example, as their chosen and desired career. They not only consent to but actually enjoy the work. It's not any different than you "consenting" to and enjoying doing graphic design work as your paid profession.)

I will go one step beyond this. Sure, let's say it is sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Is that a bad thing? I think we agree that rock 'n roll is good LOL. Sex is good as long as all participants are freely consenting adults, no one is being harmed, and the sex is not being used to manipulate/coerce/extort/wield power over anyone. I don't actually see any drugs in this video unless you count a few cigarettes. On that front, it really comes down to health. I don't use any substances for health reasons. However, if someone is an adult and wants to have a few drinks or smoke a couple joints and that behavior is not harming anyone else and they are not endangering anyone with the behavior (i.e. like driving under the influence), then I personally don't have a problem with that. I can accept people making choices that I might personally disagree with as long as they are not harming anyone. 

Anyway, I want you to know that I greatly appreciate your response. I am really glad we are all having this conversation. Thank you also for the BTS video; I will check in out when I get a little more time.

3 hours ago, Beerjeezus said:

Look what a walking contradiction I am, because here I go engaging in an internet debate!

I think the way you view the video is very creative and interesting. What makes most of us understand it the other way around is the way it’s filmed with the focus on women’s bodies, their scant clothing etc... aka the so-called male gaze. It seems to me that this way of filming takes the focus away from the fact that it’s the women who are actually watching (quite literally, considering that  we’re having this conversation in a thread dedicated to talking about men’s bodies - I think that’s an interesting aspect of fan culture but that’s for another time), but you could very well argue that it’s an interesting juxtaposition (even though I think that’s way too smart from Sam Beyer and he probably did it accidentally while all he wanted to portay were rockstars and The Boobs ). 

You reminded me of this video Lindsay Ellis made about the way Megan Fox’s character is portrayed in the Transformers movies vs. the way it’s written in the script. Here it is if you’re interested.

 

 

Thanks for sharing this! Another thing to put on my watchlist. Thank you for debating. I think you are thinking about this a great way too. Yes, there is focus on the women's bodies, which as you point out is a little odd since they are the ones doing the watching. If I had any other criticisms, I would want to see more diversity in the models ethnicities (I only spotted one woman of color) and in their body types. But showing female bodies is not necessarily objectifying; it can also be empowering. Women aren't obligated to hide their bodies to make men comfortable (say it louder for the toxic workplaces in the back LOL). As we have discussed extensively before and seem to agree on, there is nothing wrong with the human body. Anyway, this may all be way too smart for Sam Beyer LOL, but I don't think it is too smart for Green Day. This falls in line with the values they purport, and given the subversive nature of much of their work, I think they were trying to consciously subvert a "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" stereotype."

Green Day, are you listening? Can you make a new song and a new video that has diverse female models, diverse body types, transwomen, etc.? I am serious. Sex positivity for everyone.  

[Beerjeezus]

30 minutes ago, Lady Mix-A-Lot said:

Thanks for sharing this! Another thing to put on my watchlist. Thank you for debating. I think you are thinking about this a great way too. Yes, there is focus on the women's bodies, which as you point out is a little odd since they are the ones doing the watching. If I had any other criticisms, I would want to see more diversity in the models ethnicities (I only spotted one woman of color) and in their body types. But showing female bodies is not necessarily objectifying; it can also be empowering. Women aren't obligated to hide their bodies to make men comfortable (say it louder for the toxic workplaces in the back LOL). As we have discussed extensively before and seem to agree on, there is nothing wrong with the human body. Anyway, this may all be way too smart for Sam Beyer LOL, but I don't think it is too smart for Green Day. This falls in line with the values they purport, and given the subversive nature of much of their work, I think they were trying to consciously subvert a "sex, drugs, and rock ' roll" stereotype."

Green Day, are you listening? Can you make a new song and a new video that has diverse female models, diverse body types, transwomen, etc.? I am serious. Sex positivity for everyone.  

The thing is, I’m not sure how subversive it actually is? I like the way you read it, but I don’t believe that was the intent. Which doesn’t neccessarily matter because we’re free to interpret it anyway we like, except that I don’t want to praise Sam Bayer for something he most likely didn’t do consciously 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Beerjeezus said:

The thing is, I’m not sure how subversive it actually is? I like the way you read it, but I don’t believe that was the intent. Which doesn’t neccessarily matter because we’re free to interpret it anyway we like, except that I don’t want to praise Sam Bayer for something he most likely didn’t do consciously 

I mean, we will never know what was in Sam Bayer's head LOL and we will all interpret it differently and that's actually a good thing, but my point remains that I think a lot of good social critique can be taken from the video.  

[Beerjeezus]

2 hours ago, Squashie said:

I invite you to watch the bts of the video:

Is there something I’m missing when it seems to me that the bts doesn’t really reveal much about the intent? It’s mostly the same stuff as in the video except from different angles?

1 minute ago, Lady Mix-A-Lot said:

I mean, we will never know what was in Sam Bayer's head LOL and we will all interpret it differently and that's actually a good thing, but my point remains that I think a lot of good social critique can be taken from the video.  

I think that’s a really cool way to view it!!! I just can’t get 100% sold on it even though I like it way better than the more straightforward interpretation.

[jengd]

3 hours ago, Lady Mix-A-Lot said:

I guess I am just not understanding what would be problematic or aging poorly about the video. Speaking broadly here (not about you), it always feels like people get upset and start screaming "problematic" when they see consensual sexual stuff while at the same time ignoring all the insidious ways rape culture creeps into popular culture. Everything in this video appears very consensual and as I stated above, the women really seem to have the upper hand here. I actually don't know what Billie being a family man has to do with this. Billie isn't the one interacting much with the models--Tre is the only one really getting handsy, which is fine since he was not married at the time, and again it all appears fully consensual. I would go a step further and argue that sex positivity and the promotion of consensual acts between adults IS a "family value." I think this is very much in line with the band's ideals of tolerance and progressivism, and I agree that there is much deeper social commentary here beyond just, "Look everybody! Half-naked women!"

Sorry, didn’t make myself clear, I meant some other, older videos like WMUWSE hasn’t aged well because it was made at a time when that style of video was very popular, you don’t see that anymore.

[Little Boy Named Booze]

I really want to read and understand this debate.
Me when I start reading a post with 500+ words:

[Guest]

2 hours ago, jengd said:

Sorry, didn’t make myself clear, I meant some other, older videos like WMUWSE hasn’t aged well because it was made at a time when that style of video was very popular, you don’t see that anymore.

Makes sense. I know back then that more theatrical videos with their own plot lines separate from the actual music were pretty popular. Basically like mini movies. But also that works for an album that was a rock opera. It had a story line and you would expect the videos to be theatrical as such. That is why that album became a stage production after all.

3 hours ago, The Grohl said:

They fucked it up right at the start by making Oh Love the lead single

It should have been Kill The DJ.

Also, can I just say how overjoyed I am that the kind of civil and intellectual debate I have always dreamed of is finally happening here? I just want to hug all of you, whether we agree or not. The world needs more of this. Maybe there is hope for the Internet after all.