About a month ago, screenwriter and director Max Landis introduced “A Scar No One Else Can See,” his foray into musical criticism on Carly Rae Jepsen’s songs. Currently standing at 149 pages, he has referred to it as a “living document” and indicated that he plans to update it as he learns more.
In a nutshell, Mr. Landis argues (although he doesn’t use that word) that Carly Rae Jepsen’s songs all revolve around the same themes, and are all about one thing, succinctly summarized as: “Carly Rae Jepsen is in Hell.”
Seeing as he took the time to type up 149 pages (so far), brought people in to shoot a promo video, create motion graphics, and build a website, and then shot update videos, I think it’s fair to say that some effort certainly was spent on it.
Now, I’ve said elsewhere in passing that I thought “Emotion” was the best pop album of 2015, but I’m not intimately familiar with Carly Rae Jepsen’s work— not in the way that Max Landis seems to be. I enjoy her work, but don’t really fall into the “fan” camp just yet. I simply thought it was an interesting idea, although I have a number of questions.
My aim isn’t to counter the Jepsen theory; neither is it to convince people to found a Center for Carly Rae Jepsen Studies. Instead my aim is simply to ask questions and throw out ideas, in the hope of learning something new and just for fun.
Shall we begin? 🙂
The “theoRae” of Jepsen
In “A Scar No One Else Can See,” interspersed with personal comments, stories, and puns on her name, Max Landis advances the theory that all of Carly Rae Jepsen’s songs are about the same subject— a brief romantic involvement with a male friend, a man in a committed relationship, and its unhealthy effects after she was rejected.
The same main themes emerge from this: Temptation. Obsession. Limerence. Secrets. Escape. Rejection. Misery/Longing. This is the case across the board, for all her songs, “even her covers, even her TV show themes, even her Christmas music!” And even the stanza she sings in “Good Time“!
As far as we can tell, according to the theory, there are two main characters in the Tale of Jepsen according to Landis: The Friend and Carly, or the Narrator. Carly/the Narrator talks to the Friend in her songs. Other characters flit in and out of the story: the Friend’s Significant Other, Carly/the Narrator’s friends, other men who are interested in her (or, as “Call Me Maybe” describes it, “all the other boys try to chase me”).
This Friend is central to the Jepsen theory. We’ll call him “the Friend” from now on because Landis makes the point the the word appears deliberate, as when Carly/the Narrator sings, “I know I’m just a friend to you / That I will never get to call you mine” (“Your Type“). In Landis’s discussion, a number of details emerge, indicating that the Friend
- Is also a singer-songwriter, a longtime collaborator of Jepsen’s in songwriting who also became famous himself
- Knows how to play the guitar
- Is in a committed relationship
- Rejected her in the end, setting off the songs
Instead of assuming that the theory is true for the sake of argument, we’ll assume simply that the theory is there, as a reality which is present. To me, that opens up some questions and directions to approach it from.
Interview: the characters
A friend of mine to whom I mentioned this theory said that our first question should be, “Max Landis: what drugs are you on, mate?” But I don’t think that’s a very viable question, so we’re not going to ask it 🙂 Instead, we’re going to ask about the main characters.
The unspoken assumption of Landis’s Jepsen theory is that the songs are texts within a context: that they come from and talk about a specific experience, over and over again— an event, or rather, The Event, which defined Jepsen’s life and career from then on, to which she returns again and again, like the time-traveling Natalia Godoy losing an earring while preparing to be Guardia de Honor at the Blessed Virgin’s procession.
This raises a question about the first main character: is the Narrator Carly herself?
I alluded to this earlier, expressing it as “Carly/the Narrator.” I simply meant to say that a song, like a poem, a story, or another work of art, doesn’t always have to be and sometimes isn’t expressed through the artist’s own voice— through the artist speaking simply as themselves. A work of art can be expressed through a different voice, a persona, or a point-of-view character experiencing the events.
One might argue that songwriting is a very intimate process; it’d be a good point, too. But it still wouldn’t preclude personas, point-of-view characters, or using different voices. It still might not mean that Carly Rae Jepsen can’t tell a story.
That also raises some questions about the second main character. First: is the Friend one man, or several?
The Jepsen theory specifies one man, a platonic friend with whom she became involved, and who ended up rejecting her. It might be a possibility, but it might not be the only possibility.
In the first question, I raised the possibility that Jepsen might be telling a story, or stories (more on that later). In general, stories have characters whom its events affect, and who influence and push events to go this or that way.
While the Friend we encounter in the songs may be one man, perhaps it’s also possible that the Friend is different people, a different person for each song or for some of them, or a composite character— different people all rolled into one character, for Carly/the Narrator to talk to and interact with throughout the song.
Construction: the themes
Landis talks about themes and sub-themes constantly throughout “A Scar No One Else Can See,” devoting pages and videos to talking about which themes and sub-themes emerge in which songs. His discussion centers on the themes within the songs, but I think there may be other themes, too.
One of these themes is stories. Do the songs tell one story, or several different stories?
Telling one story, again and again and again, is the central argument of the Jepsen theory. But once more, while this might be a possibility, perhaps it’s not the only possibility.
For example, perhaps the same story is told over the course of several songs. This might mean that some songs have the same overarching narrative, but while it might be true for those songs, it isn’t true for others. A song might be connected to a few other songs, but not to some others— one story over several songs. Or perhaps the songs tell a similar story, but not the exact same story every single time— one story per song.
We keep coming back to the Friend, at the center of the Jepsen theory; we’ll come back to him again later on. But to me it raised a question: might we be confusing the part for the whole? Is the Friend also another theme?
Doubtless the Friend recurs again and again, according to the theory. But to treat him as a character would be different from treating him as a theme. As a character, the Friend is the figure whom Carly/the Narrator falls for, but who rejected her; as a character, the Friend has agency.
But as a theme? As a theme, the Friend is an event, a figure, instead of The Event and The Figure. Landis mentions that Carly/the Narrator never describes his physical characteristics. This is in contrast, for instance, to the intimate picture that someone like Taylor Swift deftly sketches when she says, “Just twin fire signs, / Four blue eyes” (“State of Grace“).
As a theme, the Friend is a device upon whom a song a can turn, and whom Carly/the Narrator can talk to and interact with in a song to get her message across. This is related to the notion that the Friend is a character, and that the songs tell stories— stories that might not even be Carly Rae Jepsen’s own stories. She might draw from experience, and yet not be limited to her experiences.
The context
In Max Landis’s “Scar No One Else Can See,” contrary to the literary theory, the author is decidedly not dead. In fact, this is the cornerstone of the theory, that Carly Rae Jepsen’s songs are about a specific experience involving a specific person.
Authors have always been not-dead, though some people insist otherwise. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of exactly how alive they are in the world of the story.
But as Landis grows to realize, considering the songs as text within context means considering them within Carly Rae Jepsen’s life: the theory puts forward a specific experience, with a specific person, in her life, which she returns to and writes about again and again and again.
That raises the most important question about one of the central figures of the story: who is the Friend?
Landis sketches some details about him in his discussion. But I’m afraid the Friend’s identity is outside our scope.
After all, we were just asking some questions, having fun over sandwiches and chocolate.
Aletheia Observer signing off. Be careful out there 🙂
-A.O.
P.S.
And now for something completely different.
Aletheia Observatory 