All I did was look up Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice once and now I’m here, about to rant. So fair warning.

One thing that’s not rant-y: I’m SUPER EXCITED to see the documentary. I adore Linda Ronstadt with all the fangirl love and appreciation possible in my heart. The first song I ever sang at two years old was her version of “Blue Bayou,” and since re-discovering her and listening to most of her discography a few years ago, I am FULL of appreciation for what she’s done as an artist – and what a fucking artist. A multi-genre-wielding singer with a considerate ear (and heart) for the technical like NO OTHER. If you can’t respect her for anything else, I don’t care who you are – you HAVE to respect her for that.

Anyway, before I go off on a tangent…oh wait, that’s what I’m doing here. But not about her art – about a review for this documentary.

What I found in my basic search of the documentary is that some asshole reviewer decided that it was treated too “PC” and the first sentence started with some unnecessary bullshit about “leftist filmmakers.”

Okay okay, I’m going to consider some context before I go full speed ahead: Ronstadt is a country-rock artist primarily, though of course she has her Spanish albums (which are beaut) and jazz, standards, etc. She went everywhere musically because she’s Linda fucking Ronstadt and she could, but first she was known as the queen of country rock. What’s the biggest demographic to like country music, especially in the decades when she was most popular? Hmm wait, lemme guess: WHITE PEOPLE. Tons of snowflake-y white people. Yes, indeed! And that’s probably who feels most protective of her (besides, uh, Latinx people, okay…). I also know this personally because my grandparents are those exact [conservative white] people, and it was my grandfather who taught me to sing “Blue Bayou.”

So obviously this reviewer who decided that the documentary was “PC” made by “leftist filmmakers” is one o’ those special snowflakes who apparently doesn’t even recall that Ronstadt herself has been a liberal since – well, I don’t know, but she’s a fucking liberal is all you need to know. (Oh, also, to make this even better: as a zillennial I discovered that the filmmakers made quite a few LGBTQ-centered films and that at least one of them is gay. Which means “leftist filmmaker” is an innuendo for ‘I’m obviously a homophobe.’ If you don’t want to sound like a bigot, you’d consider your language usage better. But I suppose if you don’t care that you’re a bigot, you wouldn’t care about not sounding like one, either.)

My other problem with the idea of the documentary being “PC” is – oh, you mean it didn’t actually go into the sex and drugs and rockstar vice stereotypes and instead just focused on her art and influence of her art? Oh shit, bro…that sounds like an actual, legitimate documentary of an artist to me.

In other words: this person’s superficial expectations of a rockstar-centric documentary weren’t met, so of course they’d write a senseless “article” about its “PC” tone and “leftist” filmmakers.

I could go further by looking through my feminist lens and examining the fact that this writer with a masculine name, who’s then most likely male, wanted something that validated the male gaze and his, I don’t know, fetishized fascination with her. (A surprise that will come as no surprise: he described her physical appearance in an entire paragraph. Like that fucking mattered. Except – oh wait! She’s female, so of course it matters. Would you dedicate an entire paragraph to what Mick Jagger or Tom Petty looked like for the most successful period of their career? That’s why when I write reviews and shit I don’t say a GOD DAMN WORD about how the artists dress or present themselves unless it’s absolutely relevant, because that’s not what matters to me and frankly I don’t think that’s what should matter to readers, either, if I’m deigning to write about art for art’s sake. And I do prefer to write about art for art’s sake, so if you ever expect anything else besides feminist rants and critiques, hi, goodbye I guess.)

It’s just fucking ironic that he went on this over-saturated tirade about how the film was apparently ‘colored through a PC lens’ but he obviously didn’t pay ANY attention to the whole point of the film; it obviously went RIGHT over his head. In which case I would boldly declare: then maybe the film wasn’t made for him. And that’s exactly where those special snowflakes come from – expecting every-single-god-damn-earthly-thing to be made SPECIFIC, ESPECIALLY for that gaze when that’s exactly what mainstream media, laws, and politics has catered to since…I don’t know, I’d wager since at least the beginning of colonialism. And of course that gaze befits a straight, white cis-male, which he probably is. (If he isn’t, then he’s upholding the white, heteronormative, patriarchal, colonial system that America was built on and still appeals to.) If you’re one of those people like he clearly is, it’d be great if you’d stop complaining when you can’t drool over female bodies who were not made solely for your pleasure or when you can’t see yourself in some major form of entertainment. How much have you heard women and POC complain about the fact that they’re not represented [positively] in the mainstream? Probably not much because the mainstream discredits and excludes that, too.

Basically, I hate to be so inflammatory, but I feel it’s wholly deserved: fuck off and let other people enjoy a documentary about a female artist and her art without smearing it with heteronormativity, homophobia, and sexism. And for the love of everything good in the world, don’t forget that it’s art. It doesn’t matter who made the art, it just matters what it says and how it makes you feel. That is the purpose of art, ultimately. Any artist will tell you that, too – “I just wanted to create something that would garner a reaction from someone.” If you can’t dig deep enough to ever be able to focus on that, then that is your problem.

Unfortunately, there’s one final beef I have to add: this reviewer acted like Ronstadt hadn’t been referring to her Mexican heritage since the ’70s – like she was white-passing up until she released her Spanish albums and redundantly added “Oh, I’m Mexican,” from there on out. I’ve read numerous articles and interviews with Ronstadt that go back to the early ’70s where she called herself Mexican, and German. She never made it seem like she was only white. If other people only saw her as white, they literally chose to only see her as white. That’s not her fucking problem – it’s THEIRS/YOURS. So please fuck off with that racist bullshit slandering mixed people. I am not here for it.

Honestly, I’d much rather focus on the fact that this documentary – judging from other reviews I read/skimmed/noticed since I have not seen it yet – is about her music and what a phenomenal vocalist she was. It’s about giving proper credit, FINALLY, to easily one of the greatest voices of the 20th century. It’s CELEBRATORY, not dramatic and scandalous, and from what I know about Ronstadt (as evidenced through her memoir, which I read and loved), that’s exactly what she would’ve preferred.

So anyway, I’m excited to see one of my favorite singers ever represented in a documentary and to hear what the interviewed artists had to say about her and her music, too.