Before her record setting release of “Tik Tok” (it was the first Hot 100 #1 of the 2010s, it spent 9 weeks there eclipsing Debby Boone’s mark of 10 weeks in 1977 with “You Light Up My Life,” it was the Billboard song of the year, it and set multiple download records which have now been eclipsed), before all that, Ke$ha was just an uncredited background vocalist on Flo Rida’s “Right Round” (“Tik Tok”).  The success of the track, along with her not receiving credit or what she thought should be a truckload of cash (or at least enough to buy a taco) begins the process of her becoming Ke$ha: the first joke she tells her public as a pop star.  Central to this talk and the joke-work that Kesha engages is a Freudian understanding of the hostile tendentious joke. In thinking about hostile tendentious jokes, two initial key components must exist:  more than two people are involved in the joke, and it allows the teller of the joke to skirt prohibited or inaccessible sources of pleasure.

The first part of this joke work described by Freud is the number of people engaged in the joke and the jokes aim: “Generally speaking, a tendentious joke calls for three people: in addition to the one who makes the joke, there must be a second who is taken as the object of the hostile or sexual aggressiveness, and a third in whom the jokes aim of producing pleasure is fulfilled.” Freud adds several pages later in relation to hostile tendentious jokes the teller of the joke attempts to “[make an] enemy small, inferior, despicable or comic” and “in a roundabout way the enjoyment of overcoming him—to which the third person, who has made no efforts, bears witness by his laughter” (Freud 118, 122).  In this framing of the joke-work, Kesha tells the joke attempting to make her enemy, the economic structure of the recording industry, men she sees as holding the power in that industry, and the subsequent construction of a reality of a lesser status for female performers, itself lesser and more importantly comical to, at the very least, her fan base in an effort to overcome.

The second part of the hostile tendentious joke I want to highlight is equally important as it is explained by Freud that the joke allows the teller to avoid restrictions: “We are now prepared to realize the part played by jokes in hostile aggressiveness. A joke will allow us to exploit something ridiculous in our enemy which we could not, on account of obstacles in the way, bring forward openly or consciously; once again, then the joke will evade restrictions and open sources of pleasure that have become inaccessible” (Freud 122-3).  In this framing, Kesha, as joke teller, evades the restrictions imposed upon her by the structures of the music industry, men, and the subsequent lower status of female performers by not coming out and speaking against those restrictions.  Instead, she jokingly adds the “$” to her name.  Freud is useful here for those reasons, but also the notion that the action of the joke telling need not be a conscious attempt nor does it need to register in the one receiving the joke as conscious.  Put another way, clear intentionality is not what one chases even though in the first joke I want to examine there is at least claimed intentionality from Kesha.

Finally, we reach the point where the first joke can be fully given, and as I alluded to, claimed: Ke$ha explained the “$” sign very early in her career even if no one paid attention.  In 2009, Joseph Branigan Lynch of Entertainment Weekly was one of the first to ask about the “$.” He asked: “Kesha is your birth name, but I’m guessing the money sign isn’t on your birth certificate. Why did you throw it in?” to which she replied, “I was on the Flo Rida song ‘Right Round,’ and I was hearing it everywhere, just all over the place. It was number one in a bajillion countries and I didn’t have enough money to buy myself a taco. So I was talking to one of my friends about it and I was like, ‘What the hell!’ I literally had two dollars to my name, and she was like, ‘Whatever, you don’t need money: You’re money.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah! I’m money!’ So it’s really just me taking the piss out of the fact that I was broke while being on a number-one record. It’s actually just being ironic about the whole money thing, because I actually stand for the opposite of putting a lot of emphasis on money” (Lynch).  The relation to Freud is fairly clear here.  Kesha had been trying to break through in her career: appearing in the video to Katy Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl” and backing vocals to Britney Spear’s “Lace and Leather,” but not reaping any of the profits or intangible successes, as she told MTV of her work with Spears: “I just did backgrounds for her ‘cause I was so broke. I needed to pay my rent.  I got a few bucks. No, [I didn’t meet her]. I just did backups for her” (MTV needs citation).  So, in an effort to attack the source of the inaccessible sources of pleasure, she changes her name to Ke$ha. 

The problem of course was that very few people got the joke or knew that it was a joke.  More jokes were perpetrated against her for the name than understood it, even she participated in it during a November 2010 FunnyorDie video that’s premise was her name was changed because the Shakey’s Pizza that held her birthday party lacked the necessary “s” for the sign outside, substituting the “$,” and thus changing her name forever.  By 2014 there still wasn’t certainty about the origin story of her name and “$” when she changed her name back to Kesha after a stint in rehab for an eating disorder, MTV UK reported it this way: “A rep confirmed to E! News that she has also changed the spelling of her name from "Ke$ha" to "Kesha". According to reports, Kesha first began using the dollar sign in her name after recording session vocals on Flo Rida track Right Round. While the song was hugely successful, the singer apparently did not benefit financially from the record's success” (MTV UK).  Her first joke never really got off the ground.  If you hadn’t already guessed, her jokes attempting to tear at the industry and creators of power in that industry while raising up the status of women were met with resistance from, using her words, “haters” who launched a series of equally hostile and perhaps sexually aggressive jokes in return about her as a drunken, Auto-Tuned, no talent party girl at best and a pretty faced whore responsible for the degradation of society at worst.  

As I alluded to at the beginning, there are many other tendentious jokes along the path to the final two jokes she tells at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards.  These jokes, like all good jokes have a set up.  The set up to the two jokes she tells through the vehicle of her clothes at the BBMAs is instructive:  leading up to the BBMAs Kesha checked herself into rehab for an eating disorder kicking off a series of events, including the infamous lawsuit against Dr. Luke and her appearance at the BBMAs.  Maura Johnston of Rolling Stone succinctly characterizes it this way: “In 2014, Kesha sued producer Dr. Luke, seeking to void all their contracts because of how, the suit claimed, Dr. Luke ‘sexually, physically, verbally, and emotionally abused [Kesha] to the point where [she] nearly lost her life.’ Dr. Luke countersued shortly after. The first big decision in these cases came on February 19, when a New York judge denied Kesha a court injunction that would have allowed her to record new music — apart from her record label, Sony Music, as well as Dr. Luke — while the suits proceeded through the courts. Since then, stars such as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga have shown support for Kesha, and fans have taken to the streets, holding rallies outside courtrooms and boardrooms” (Johnston).  The ramifications of the court battle could be a conference paper itself; my interest, at the moment, is that the lawsuits created the conditions where Kesha was scheduled to appear at the awards show, was allowed, then denied, and then later approved by Kemosabe Records to perform.

Billboard magazine’s Joe Lynch explained the position of Kemosabe records, Dr. Luke’s label, leading up to the BBMAs: 

After a week of rumors that Kesha would perform at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards this Sunday (May 22), dick clark productions announced in a statement today (May 17) that the pop star will not, as of now, be able to perform on the show. And as with much of Kesha's recent legal drama, Dr. Luke's label Kemosabe Records is involved.

“Kesha accepted an invitation to perform on the show and she received written approval from Dr. Luke's record label, Kemosabe Records," dick clark productions said in a statement. "Kemosabe subsequently rescinded its approval following a media report on Wednesday May 11 regarding Kesha’s appearance on the BBMAs. Unfortunately, Kesha and Kemosabe have since been unable to come to an agreement for Kesha to perform on the show." (Citation) 

Of course, Dr. Luke and the label relented and Kesha did perform under the condition that her performance would not be seen as a protest.  The World Entertainment News Network provided the official statement from Kemosabe:  "Kesha's performance on the Billboard Music Awards was always approved, in good faith," a Kemosabe spokesperson wrote in the press release. "Approval was only suspended when Kemosabe learned Kesha was to use the performance as a platform to discuss the litigation. "Now that Kemosabe has obtained assurances, that it is relying upon, from Kesha, her representatives... that neither Kesha nor her supporters will use the performance as such a platform, the approval has been restored" (Citation)

            If I’ve managed to keep your attention this long, this does seem like a setup to an incredibly unfunny joke even if it fits snugly into the framework of Freud’s hostile tendentious joke.  Kesha came to the BBMA’s to perform against all the obstacles, with her career both in crisis and threatened by the music industry, and against Dr. Luke specifically.  So, she showed up on the pink carpet dressed as a matador in purple as homage to Prince, another joke lost in the public eye (for clarity, it was the matador part that was the joke, not the purple homage to Prince). Keiko Soll of The Hollywood Reporter provides what is a wonderfully accurate accounting of her clothing and message vis-à-vis Prince, but in the context of this paper Soll’s role is as the straight person: 

On Sunday, pop singer Kesha arrived on the red carpet at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards to a round of applause and cheer. And not just because she's an amazing artist. Kesha's Prince-inspired Billboard Music Award outfit was a very clear tribute to the late singer. The ensemble outfit included a deep purple jacket with intricate gold embroidery, purple cropped pants, and a dazzling pair of gold loafer-inspired heels. At first glance, it looked at bit like a flamboyant mariachi band outfit — but the vibrant color was an unmistakable callback to Prince's signature purple outfits. Kesha's choice of a rather masculinely-styled suit paired with the heels also totally played into the way Prince often blurred gender lines with his distinctive and overtly sensual style. (Citation)

It is not that Soll is wrong in her assessment of the outfit (aside the crucial mistaking of mariachi for matador).  Even if Soll had understood Kesha was wearing a matador outfit, and most did understand that it was a matador costume, it is unlikely Soll would have understood the full measure of the tendentious joke, as most, if not all, did not.  Among those that did understand the purple suit to be the costume of a matador, they did not attempt to read the full weight of the symbolism and the hostile tendentious joke.  A small number of commentators did refer to her as a fighter obliquely and cautiously not mentioning the legal battles.  Many more simply placed it in context to Prince’s various fights against gender and the digital music age, not her struggles against the music industry.  Still others turned the joke back on Kesha, much as they did with her changing her name to include the “$” and pointed to an appearance she made on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon where she detailed a comical story of her sneaking into Paisely Park and leaving a song for Prince before fleeing as fast as she could without a word.

            Around the time of the BBMAs, the “Free Kesha” movement was at its strongest; she had just suffered defeat in the judicial system in her efforts to free herself from the Sony and Kemosabe contracts failing to get an injunction.  However, the choice of the matador outfit, beyond what I believe was a sincere attempt to pay homage to Prince, is instructive if we consider the role of the matador in bullfighting.  Writing about bullfighting and the metaphors within the fight, Timothy Mitchell quotes Carrie Douglass as arguing that “’the bullfight is a metaphor that makes a statement about the social order,’ inasmuch as the social order is represented as a sexual one and ‘the bullfighter is to the bull as man is to women’” before Mitchell clarifies that Douglass misses the point on the last as “both men and women can and do picture themselves as the bullfighter and the opposite sex as the bull” (398-9).  Kesha was being monetarily championed particularly by the Taylor Swift’s of the world (she is reported to have given Kesha $250,000 towards her fight and others lesser amounts of monetary support) and encouraged in the Twittersphere by the likes of Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Carrie Underwood, and a veritable who’s who of particularly female pop stars, though males also sent messages of support. 

In dressing as the matador, the one to finally kill the bull, Kesha seemed to be arguing through the hostile tendentious joke that she would slay the bull for female performers everywhere.  Again, the joke was not understood as such by the joke’s target or the joke’s audience even if it successfully skirted the very real and present prohibitions that she not to use the BBMAs to “comment” on her legal issues or protest.  At best, it was read as marking her as a fighter with an unnamed target, and at worst, it was seen as a laughable outfit that recalled a less hostile, more innocent joke about herself she told about Prince on The Tonight Show.  I will argue this joke had two targets:  the continued if not obvious protest against her usual targets of the music industry, male power within the industry, and a lack of female power AND when paired with the second hostile tendentious joke it attacked those expecting her to be able, like a matador, to slay that particular bull once and for all.

            Enter the Colonel Sanders outfit and a cover of “It Ain’t Me, Babe.”  Now, based solely on the choice of Dylan song’s to cover, one would think that the protest would be clear.  It wasn’t.  In this talk I’m going to lean on the room’s prior knowledge of Dylan and the song and quickly summarize the potential through Chris Willman’s take on it for Billboard: “So, whose expectations does Kesha mean to tell us she's disregarding? Dr. Luke’s? The music industry’s? Anyone who ever enjoyed hearing her rap about morning whisky breath and expected a career’s worth of the same? Quite possibly all of the above.” Certainly there is a great measure in all of the questions that Willman is asking.  I, however, want to read another target for the joke:  Those pushing her to fight the good fight.  Her appearance as Colonel Sanders besides being a chain restaurant, besides commodifying a Southern home cooked staple into a generic mass produced bucket, and besides invoking Colonel Harland David Sanders own fights with control over his name and product, her choice occurred during the time in which KFC was pushing a new ad campaign with replacement Colonel Sanders beginning with Darrell Hammond and including the likes of Jim Gaffigan, Norm McDonald, and others.  This easy replacement of an icon is symbolic to the manner in which Kesha, “$” or not, is replaceable in the industry.  There is always another star, particularly female star, to take her place. Adding to this, though his statement is entirely anachronistic (the actual shuffling of stand ins for Colonel Sander was contemporary) Hammonds with no success, was critical of the KFC saying “I’m really upset someone didn’t tell me that [I would be replaced]” said Hammond.  “To build me up like, you’re going to bring back the Colonel, he’s an American icon…and then there’s five others.”  Again, though his statement is anachronistic, the steady flow of changes as to who was playing the Colonel was not at the time of the BBMAs.  Kesha, in her choice of clothing, highlights the very simple, yet awful reason her jokes could only go so far:  there are always “five others.”

Shortly after the performance it should have come as no surprise that Kesha began scaling back her legal pursuits, but for the Free Kesha movement and her Animals, it most certainly was a surprise because they didn’t get the full measure of the joke.

Keith Harris of the The Rolling Stone explains the legal maneuverings of Kesha after the BBMAs:  "Kesha has dismissed her California action without prejudice while she pursues her appeal and other legal claims in the New York courts," the pop star's counsel, Daniel Petrocelli, said in an official statement. "Kesha is focused on getting back to work and has delivered 28 new songs to the record label. We have conveyed to Sony and the label Kesha's strong desire to release her next album and single as soon as possible."

In the end, the label has the last word, in many ways proving Kesha’s point and the ultimate failure of her tendentious joking to really remove the obstacles that stand in the way of pleasure as Jeff Nelson ends his column in People Magazine: “The reality is that for well over two years, Kesha chose — and it was entirely her choice — not to provide her label with any music,” Luke’s attorney, Lepera, said in an October statement to PEOPLE. “Kesha was always free to move forward with her music, and an album could have been released long ago had she done so. She exiled herself. It was not until months after the denial of her injunction motion — for the first time in June and July 2016 — that Kesha started to provide the label with music.”

            Some might say, as was true with adding the “$” to her name, the joke was on her.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

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Freud, Sigmund.  Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. New York: Norton, 1960. Print.

 

Lynch, Joseph Brannigan.  “Ke$ha: A Music Mix Q&A on her top 5 hit “Tik Tok,’ the origin of her name, and why she’s not welcome in Paris Hilton’s home.” Entertainment Weekly. 11 Dec. 2009. Web. 11 Apr. 2017.

 

"TiK ToK by Kesha." Song Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2017.