tothetune | Gerard in Rock Sound

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
Interview: Andrew Kelham

Have you thought about how My Chemical Romance will reintroduce themselves to music fans in 2010? Do you ever wonder if your band is still needed in music?
Says Gerard Way (vocals):
"It's funny because the musical landscape is ever changing, but I think there's always a place for us and I think we're absolutely needed, especially now. I don't say that with any arrogance, I just really believe in my band and I believe that our band does what it does better than anybody else. There's no one that can do this like us. I feel a gap when we are gone and I hope people do too, if they don't then we're not doing our job properly. I think we're absolutely needed, but I'm glad we're coming back in 2010 because, as much as people need us, I think they needed a break from us too. I hope we got the balance of that right."

What have you tried to achieve with your forthcoming fourth album? How is it different from you past work?
"With this record we tried to ignore all the cosmetic nonsense and focus on becoming a truly great rock band. We felt that the world needed a really straight and pure rock band, you're hard pressed to find a lot of those these days. It was less about the theatricality and more about how we become the greatest young American rock band musically."

How are you adapting to fatherhood?
"It's great, it's amazing. Obviously we just wanted a healthy baby, but I was excited to have a girl as there are things I can see myself helping a girl with that I could never do with a guy, things like picking out clothes and stealing eyeliner, all that sort of stuff!"

Mod note: As happy and excited as we are that people are starting to discuss and converse in the comments, we'd like to remind everyone to play nicely.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It probably wasn't that well reasoned, it's true, but I am choosing to take his comment in context. What he said wasn't offensive in my opinion, though it definitely is sad that gender roles and stereotypes are so ingrained into our culture.

It does not bother me when Frank said the offensive comment, he didn't take it back, it was pretty hypocritical and, as you acknowledged, he has added other offenses to his track record. I have never taken offense to anything said by Bob or Ray, but I am perfectly prepared to believe that there must be some quotes out there that they have said that play into the realm of sexist or what have you. I myself have made some stupid comments without thinking about it first.

I don't really have anything to say about your comments towards MSI, because as you said, all interpretations are, indeed, valid, but, to me, including "irony" makes a huge difference. It's meant to be offensive, but it's not supposed to be sincerely bigoted, so I think (again, another interpretation that no one has to agree with) that it actually is made "less bad".

In a way, I don't actually see the harm in making jokes about gender roles, because it makes people think about them and it acknowledges their existence, which is how we are enabled to fight against them and be ourselves. Sure, I see how it sucks that it is so engrained into our subconsciousness, and I'm not saying Gerard intended such a thing to be raised.

Joking about racism or presenting it ironically does not actually make it okay. It leaves open a lot of problematic things and interpretations that actually can perpetuate stereotypes needlessly.

http://www.earthling-concerned.com/social-studies/ironic-racism-is-still-racism/
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/05/17/amy-sedaris-and-hipster-racism/
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/02/12/stuff-white-people-do-think-that-racism-is-ok-if-youre-being-ironic-about-it/

Gerard in Rock Sound

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