Arts & Culture

ELF | Brat Politik

By |

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Brat Summer intersected with a period of serious political anxiety in the United States. The prolific lime green movement, a response to the cocaine-starved party-never-stops aesthetic of Charli XCX’s Brat, rode the wave of a rising impulse in our generation to party, cry and party again, such that the whole world scrambled to embody ‘brat’ itself. In the aftermath of a brutal presidential debate which raised existential fears over our generation’s future (to defeat fascism, to save our climate), it seemed that the only remaining option was to indulge ourselves at the withering end of prosperity. 

It appeared a blessing, then, that the Democratic party would replace Joe Biden with a brat candidate — a progressive woman that would both beat Donald Trump and heed a younger generation. But we should be wary, I think, of the way in which liberal politicians leveraged the trending term to resituate themselves in the two-party system. 

TikTok’s Etymology Nerd argues that ‘brat’ is a self-contained concept: “You can only gesture at what ‘brat’ really is by talking about other related concepts. … ‘Brat’ is something more, something ineffable that can’t really be captured with a cohesive definition.” It doesn’t help that the album constantly defies itself thematically — from the indifferent egoism of “360” (“I don’t f*cking care what you think”) to the vulnerable and doubt-filled “So I,” a heartbreaking tribute to late hyperpop artist SOPHIE.