“Factory Girl” by Xiu Xiu. Taken from the album Always.
Another post about Xiu Xiu, who on their last record Always are as knotty and confounding as ever. At Spin Jamie Stewart writes about “Factory Girl”, one of its more eerie and powerful tracks:
This is about the internal migration in China of women from rural villages to Guangzhou industrial zone to work in factories. This is the largest migration in human history. It is about objectification via consumerism and dehumanizing of Chinese women in order to have more garbage. The expectation that people must ruin their bodies for corporations is the most accepted rape in modernity.
In the song’s lyrics, though, Stewart complicates this perspective of simple condemnation:
Factory girl, factory girl
What will i do for you?
Nothing, nothing but pull it
To LBFM.biz
His name-drop of a sex tourism-themed porn site (take my word for it) complicates his earlier moral stance by implicating Stewart in the exploitation he condemns. Intense!
“Factory Girl” is also musically fascinating — Ches Smith’s percussion part sounds chillingly mechanical and perfectly complements the industrialization theme of the lyrics.
