Katy Perry: Part of Me

            Before engaging this review, you should know that the wife and I did not walk into Katy Perry’s Part of Me (in 2D) under any ironic pretenses. We walked in as hardcore, diehard, for better or worse, Katy Kat fanatics. (Me probably moreso than the wife.) I fell in love with Katy Perry the first time I saw her “Hot n Cold” video, back in spring ’07, and realized this chick was doing pop music right: she was having a helluva good time. I’ve been a committed Katy Perry fan ever since, following every single, every music video, every televised live performance, every SNL song and skit, and as little of the Perry-Brand debacle as possible – all of this following and following and following much to the chagrin* of my uber-cool (male) friends** who relish the likes of uber-cool (male) music. It was this long-forged Katy Perry fan-fare, formed perfect through the fire of social chastisement, that carried me and my wife into the theater to experience Part of Me, just as it carried us into an Austin auditorium last summer to witness Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream Tour first hand. Surely, we’ve been the subject of more than one prayer circle.

            Part of Me is exactly what you would expect in many ways, sprinkled with a smathering of surprises and even heart-breaking scenarios. Of course, there are the legions of pint-sized fans, pearly grinned and caffeinated on giddiness. Most of these young fans are either in costume, full-music video themed make-up, or they’re sporting tacky homemade t-shirts and dresses professing all manner of adoration and praise for Katy Perry, if not for a specific Katy Perry song. The film features lengthy sets of concert footage, offering bothPerry and her fans equal screen time. As fans ourselves, we loved the electric energy of the live-sets – the  dancing, the costume changes, the props, the Vaudevillian absurdity of Perry’s stage-play that rises above the cotton candy simplicity of princess pop music. This right here – all this gratuity and fun – is the stuff we love about Katy Perry. This right here is why we paid admission to the film and the concert.

            However, the best moments in Part of Me are the intimate moments between Katy and her family, Katy and her friends, Katy and the camera. In these moments, mocked in the media as sanctimoniously staged, we see Katy Perry as a girl that is not only well loved but who also loves well. It’s impressive to witness Katy’s commitment to family and friends, even hiring her sister and close friends to act as managers, wardrobe coordinators, make-up artists, and backstage hands – many of whom had zero experience within the field of their tour positions. Katy Perry has become known for meeting people, deciding she likes them, and then giving them some kind of Katy Perryflavored job. In such ridiculous business-mindedness, Katy assures that the people she loves are employed and also that they are near her.

            Whether these moments are, as the media would have us believe, sanctimoniously staged or not, seems of little consequence when we see the moments shared between Katy Perry and her entourage, even her fans. In Part of Me’s most climatic scene, we have access to a moment that feels far too personal for cameras as Perry emotionally, even physically, breaks-down from the strain and stress of her divorce. (Notice: the film finds a way of acknowledging Perry's divorce from Brand, without ever speaking ill of Brand in the process. I appreciated this neutrality, even as I wondered how tempting it was to show bias.) As Katy Perry writhes, almost dry-heaving with sobs in her make-up chair, her largest crowd yet awaits her outside in Brazil. Gently, her friend and manager approaches Perry's side and says, “Katy, you have two choices right now: you can either cancel the show or you can give it your best. But you have to make a choice.” Perry chooses to go on stage, requiring assistance to even approach the stage where she collapses one last time before standing, gathering herself, and assuming character as the peppermint and lollipops do-gooder in a poodle-skirt swirl of scant innocence. It’s a powerful scene – Perry assuming character through the gravity of her life – and it makes one mindful of that age-old entertainment missive “the show must go on.”

            However, it also makes me think of the fairy tale world Katy Perry portrays. She’s a California Gurl. She’s a Friday night party animal. She’s an alien lover. She's a girl-kisser, a pearl, a face on a milk carton, a Vegas bride, a peacock plumer. Baby, she’s a firework. She’s anything her imagination can imagine, a princess in a tower of whipped cream guarded by an army of gummi bears, but she’s also unmistakably human. The fairy tale heroine has her pumpkin and her poison apple and her neverending sleep, just as she has her deferred hopes and lost loves. I’m not sure what this speaks to Perry’s young audience, but I know I was moved, and my wife was moved, by Perry’s exuberance and tenacity and passion. I love writing, but I often love beer more. I love teaching, but I sometimes have debilitating malaise. Could I love something as much as Katy Perry loves music and performance and pizzazz? Could I love something to the detriment of my own sanity and skin? Could I love something more than my own need for emotional security? I’m not sure I could, unless that something were my wife or my pug or another pint of super fine hoppy ale.

            I’ve said to several people that I walked out of Katy Perry’s Part of Me feeling like I could punch a hurricane. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie. And she’s that kind of performer. I saw Katy Perry live last summer after a week on extreme pain pills from an abdominal abnormality. I was not pregnant, but something had set up shop in my gut that would later blow the walls out of my colon and cause me to miss Kelly Clarkson in concert (the only female pop star I love more than Robyn, who is the only pop star I love more than KatyPerry). We considered skipping the concert, due to my health, but I knew that Katy Perry was the elixir I needed. How often do you get to see a show like the Teenage Dream Tour? How often do you get sprayed with whipped cream from a canon? Or have a thorny little diva serenade your balcony with an acoustic guitar on a pink cloud? Not to mention, Robyn was the opening act. I was NOT missing that show. And while Katy Perry did not heal my gut like the hemorrhaging lady touching Christ’s cloak in the crowd, she gave me two hours of constant, honest, fever-pitched joy. A friend of mine said once, “Yeah, Katy Perry’s fine and all, but no one’s going to be listening to her in twenty years.” I said to him, “Screw twenty years. She’s now. She’s huge and she’s here now.” It wasn’t the most profound of retorts on my part, but it’s the truth. Katy Perry seems to know the ways of pop culture – here today, forgotten tomorrow – so she’s blowing it up while she can. Carpe diem and all that she-bang. And for those of us listening, she’s making a solid case to do the same.

* One common confrontation I’ve received concerning my love for Katy Perry is “You only like Katy Perry because she has big boobs.” To which I’m forced to reply, “Sure, but I listen to Katy Perry’s records on my home and car stereo where I can’t see her boobs.” What the confronter does not realize is that this is more of a judgment on me than on Katy Perry. Even moreso, only women have said this to me, which is more a judgment on themselves than Katy Perry. Beauty begets beauty in some, while it triggers the fear of ugliness in others. Go figure.

** My most favorite Katy Perry confrontation came from my dear friend Amber Haines, a glorious poet and biscuit maker, who once leaned across a café table in Fayetteville, Arkansas, took my hand, and said in her sausage-gravy thick Alabama drawl, “Kevin, what’s with all this Katy Perry bullshe-it?” I hear Amber in my head damn near everytime I listen to Katy Perry.