{"id":12286,"date":"2012-09-14T23:37:49","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T22:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=12286"},"modified":"2012-09-18T09:02:11","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T08:02:11","slug":"musical-chairs-exterminating-angel-by-the-creatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/09\/14\/musical-chairs-exterminating-angel-by-the-creatures\/","title":{"rendered":"Musical
Chairs: “Exterminating Angel” by the
Creatures"},"content":{"rendered":"
<p>
  We recently, as a team, <a
  href=\"http:\/\/www.thisismyjam.com\/badrepuk\">signed &#8220;BadrepUK&#8221;
  up to
  <strong
    >This Is My Jam<\/strong><\/a>. This got me thinking about the songs I might
    submit to the Grand Communal <del
    datetime=\"2012-09-14T21:41:17+00:00\">Cacophony<\/del> Mixtape. Given our
    name, we kicked off with Joan Jett (of course), but I think the next thing
    I&#8217;m going to send our Rhian (who is curating the Jams at the moment)
    is actually this.<\/p>\n
    <p>
      It&#8217;s a Creatures single from &#8217;99. It&#8217;s an acquired
      taste. But I like it, for a few reasons.<\/p>\n
    </p>
    <p>
      <iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UXtKf9nByhc\"
      frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n
    </p>
    <p>
      <strong
        >Exterminating Angel<\/strong> was released on a late Creatures album,
        <strong
          >Anima Animus<\/strong>, in 1999, and was still a dancefloor mainstay
          in the early-to-mid-&#8217;00s in the kind of sticky-floored goth
          clubs I liked to frequent in my late teens and early 20s.<\/p>\n
          <p>
            It&#8217;s a weird track in the context of the rest of the album,
            nearly all of which is gentler, and none of which has the same
            relentless, malicious, jagged electro edge. It&#8217;s the track you
            remember the most, with its Biblical, apocalyptic theme and pounding
            percussion. The rest of the album&#8217;s tracks kind of have to be
            coaxed out from a musical cupboard-under-the-stairs where
            they&#8217;ve hidden from its sweeping bite. After picking up the CD
            &#8211; the day after it and I collided on one of the aforementioned
            sticky goth dancefloors &#8211; I spent some months hitting the
            repeat button on
            <strong
              >Exterminating Angel<\/strong>, disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t
              all like this.<\/p>\n
              <p>
                Why I&#8217;m submitting it to BadRep&#8217;s Jam in particular,
                though, is this: it is entirely from the point of view of the
                Old Testament&#8217;s Angel of Death, on a mission to kill the
                sons of Egypt, as per the Bible story. But it&#8217;s not just
                about that. Maybe it&#8217;s just Siouxsie&#8217;s delivery, or
                the fact that the lyrics are both about a story where only the
                sons of privilege count, and disdainful to the back teeth of
                that fact (&#8220;poor little rich thing&#8221;) &#8211; but I
                think the angel is very much coded as a vengeful female voice,
                enacting all the grisly, monstrous, destructive urges that are
                enshrined as natural in so many men and rarely if at all in
                women. &#8220;For the hell of it,&#8221; in fact. (VH1 asked
                Siouxsie not to perform it because it contains references to
                menstrual blood. Oh, and piss.)<\/p>\n
              </p>
              <p>
                It&#8217;s one of the Unwritten Rules of Siouxsie Sioux that on
                lyrical face value, one is often only ever half sure what
                she&#8217;s actually on about<sup
                  ><a href=\"#footnote_0_12286\" id=\"identifier_0_12286\"
                  class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\" For
                  example, Christine. &ldquo;Now she&rsquo;s in purple, now
                  she&rsquo;s the turtle&rdquo;, anyone? Yeah. This is coherent
                  by comparison. \">1<\/a><\/sup>, but I think
                  <strong
                    >Exterminating Angel<\/strong> is a uniquely beautiful and
                    ugly track. It resonates with me on a deeper level than the
                    Banshees&#8217; single <a
                    href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_hMagNuhLkk\"><strong
                      >Cities In Dust<\/strong><\/a>, which is about the
                      destruction of Pompeii and is similarly Big, Ancient and
                      World-Ending in scope.<\/p>\n
                      <p>
                        I Googled &#8220;angel of death female&#8221; to compare
                        gendered representations of the angel in the story.
                        Wikipedia popped up first, and helpfully listed <a
                        href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Death_(personification)\">several
                        countries<\/a> where folklore representations of Death
                        more generally are female (death is a &#8220;she&#8221;,
                        for example, in the folklore of some Slavic
                        communities). But most of the results on my first page
                        weren&#8217;t about the Bible story, or the angel
                        figure, at all.<\/p>\n
                      </p>
                      <p>
                        Instead, they were mainly about other things we apply
                        the phrase &#8220;angel of death&#8221; to in a
                        female-gendered way. Female serial killers abounded,
                        along with headlines about women in the nursing
                        profession (so often referred to in things like Marie
                        Curie Cancer Care literature as &#8220;angels&#8221;)
                        who ill-treated their charges. A few &#8220;sexy nurse
                        &#8211; evil angel of death version with black
                        dress!&#8221; fancy dress costumes completed the
                        picture.<\/p>\n
                      </p>
                      <p>
                        There was nothing particularly mythic or powerful about
                        the way any of these women were framed by the
                        &#8220;angel of death&#8221; phrase, though some were
                        dangerous. And although the gender of mythic death
                        personifications does vary worldwide, the overall tone
                        of my research online about female iterations of this
                        particular mythic and Biblical figure, taken as a whole,
                        was often merely patronising. To get to anything useful,
                        one needed a pair of Sexism Waders.<\/p>\n
                      </p>
                      <p>
                        I think that says it all, really, about why this song
                        mattered to me when I heard it. Female violence is so
                        often either downplayed or fetishised &#8211; witness
                        how long it took women to get to box at Olympic level
                        &#8211; where in men it is normalised (at least as a
                        cultural idea if not a legal reality). And
                        Siouxsie&#8217;s angel is a sort of horrible challenge
                        to that idea. There&#8217;s precisely nothing nice about
                        her whatsoever. Hers is a grand cry of &#8220;Piss on
                        it, I&#8217;m sick of it&#8221; &#8211; and although
                        I&#8217;m generally a friendly sort who&#8217;s about as
                        murderous as a bag of Haribo Starmix, I have a great
                        many days when, re: the patriarchy at least, I can
                        <em
                          >certainly<\/em> get behind that sentiment.<\/p>\n
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                              class=\"footnote\"> For example,
                              <strong
                                >Christine<\/strong>. &#8220;Now she&#8217;s in
                                purple, now she&#8217;s the turtle&#8221;,
                                anyone? Yeah. This is coherent by comparison.
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                                                      <p>
                                                        VH1 asked Siouxsie not
                                                        to perform it because it
                                                        contains references to
                                                        menstrual
                                                        blood.<\/p>\n<div
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        ></strong
      >
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</p>