Girth-Worth Equation Fails Reality Test

Heart came to the Pacific Amphitheatre last Friday, and it turned out that the band’s videos lie. Ann Wilson does have a body, after all.

On MTV, Heart’s lead singer turns into an incorporeal being. The reason? Wilson has committed a sin that image mongers will not pardon: like a lot of people approaching 40, she has put on weight.

Wilson doesn’t look like a Hefner fantasy, or like one of the famous female hardbodies you may have seen elsewhere in this paper, in ads designed to make you feel so insecure about your own looks that you will run right out and buy a health club membership.

Wilson, God help her, looks like a lot of real people, and that simply is not allowed in the world of rock star glitz and fame. Consequently, she forfeits her right to be seen in her entirety. The video tastemakers, reflecting and pandering to society’s prejudice against human forms that don’t meet a certain, appetizing norm, have rendered their verdict: Wilson can keep her head, but off with her body.

If hers was a band that stuck to the highest ideals of rock--the ideals of unfettered, take-me-as-I-am assertion of self--they would tell the tastemakers where to go. But Heart, which has reaped a commercial bonanza in the last few years by trading in its guts for gloss, has ceased to beat independently. This is one band that is firmly plugged into the life support of the lucrative image-making machinery.

The machine sells records by weaving video fantasies that condition viewers to look at comely surfaces rather than probe for substance. Never mind that Heart wouldn’t exist without Wilson or that the band’s only distinctive musical attribute is her gale-force voice.

This is show biz, and this too-large woman must be de-emphasized through disincorporation. The result? Heart videos show Wilson from the shoulders up. Infrequent full-body shots disguise her in the distortion of fun-house lenses, or position her in distant shadows, caped in black, an orphan from her own band. In her place, the camera focuses on the cavorting of Wilson’s lithe, blond younger sister, Nancy--the guitar player whose figure fits the glamour machine’s stamp.

To avoid any chance of misunderstanding, let’s be clear that my gripe is not with Ann Wilson’s waistline. It is with an attitude and a methodology of selling--whether of pop stars or of any other commodity--that exalts only exteriors and ignores meanings. Wilson has given in to that mind set by allowing the transparent concealment of her body, but that makes her more of a victim than a perpetrator.

Video values imply that a fat lady cannot sing--or at least that she should be only heard, not seen. From the vantage point of values concerned with accomplishments rather than appearances, this is not merely hogwash but an insidious form of prejudice.

Does it matter that Janis Joplin had a whiskey belly? That Sandy Denny, one of the greatest, most influential voices in folk-rock, was plump? That the soul of an Aretha Franklin or an Etta James comes encased in an ample body?

To the people in charge of deciding how to market Heart and its surface-conscious brethren, it apparently does.

At some point, though, the curtain of image must come down. Reality must intrude.

For Heart, like most rock bands, the reality check is live performance. On Friday, as the band began its summer tour in Costa Mesa, it had to face facts and put Ann Wilson out front. Whatever shape she might come in, Heart simply doesn’t have any other strong musical asset or personality to put forward.

Funny thing is, the Heart fans who have been shielded from seeing all of Wilson on TV seemed delighted to see all of her on stage.

Unfortunately, we can’t show you what they saw and liked at the Pacific Amphitheatre. Heart, according to a Capitol Records spokeswoman, has a blanket policy of not allowing itself to be photographed in concert.

The crowd cheered Wilson and her band lavishly. One fan laid flowers at her feet. Nobody within my earshot shouted out that she should go on a diet. Wilson, in return, sang with her accustomed force and with impressive feeling that brought some life to several of the band’s formulaic ballads. She moved with the music, she acted as a friendly, reasonably comfortable between-songs emcee and she showed most of the attributes of a front woman who doesn’t deserve to be cut out of her own band’s videos.

The same sort of thinking at play in Heart’s videos is behind another unfortunate denial-of-self that occurs too often in the pop world: the decision of some black stars to alter their appearance so they won’t look “too black.” (Are you listening, Michael Jackson?)

In both cases, performers give in to prejudice for the sake of widening their appeal, thinking that a substantial segment of their potential audience will reject them if they present themselves as they really are. Talk about gaining the world and losing your soul--with fans like those, who needs enemies?

What we all need is more countervailing influences against prejudice. In politics, perhaps the Jesse Jackson candidacy will turn out to be a push in that direction. In pop culture, the movie “Hairspray” sets the best recent example, taking satirical potshots at prejudice based on physique and race.

“Hairspray” is a funny spoof of teen dance flicks that has an underlying point to make. In it, a tubby heroine wins the handsome leading man and is named queen of the dance contest, mainly because she has a great, sweet, fearless personality and can dance up a storm.

Heart and its handlers should be sure to see it before they make another video.

LIVE ACTION: Martha Davis, former Motels singer, plays the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight. . . . Country singer Darden Smith plays tonight at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana, with tickets $2.94 courtesy of KIK-FM. Doors open at 6, with the show at 8 p.m. Tickets go on sale a week from today (after 4 p.m.) for a July 26 show at the Crazy Horse by Emmylou Harris. She is also playing the Coach House on July 23. Tickets go on sale today after 4 p.m. for Hoyt Axton’s July 11 show at the Crazy Horse. . . . Public radio station KSBR sponsors the first in a series of free concerts Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Avanti Trattoria restaurant, 27762 Vista del Lago in Mission Viejo. Appearing is New Age guitarist Chuck Jonkey, along with Karl Malone on flute and tabla.