The Bob and the Boob

In Saturday's Herald was a column by Ana Veciana-Suarez (and let me say right now that I usually read and enjoy her column.... Well, maybe enjoy is a little strong, but I read her regularly and don't gag, so enjoy it is) tackling the weighty issue of Bob Dylan's Victoria's Secret ads. You can read what she has to say here.
This is the response (quite measured, compared to my usual rants, or so the RLA says) that I sent to the Herald. For reasons that will be quite obvious, it'll never see light of day on the Herald's pages, so I present it to you in its entirety.

Last March I wrote the following on my blog:

"More Things I Wish I Never Saw
Friday, March 14, 2003

Last night: TV was on and I was doing a little hand sewing. I hear Bob Dylan's voice and music coming from the TV. I look up. It's an ad for Victoria's Secret.

I shake my head and check the contents of my glass, but no. I am sober and I am straight and that is Bob Dylan being used to advertise women's lingerie. For the past 30 years my friends have ridiculed me for my lewd fantasies involving me and the Bob. Is it possible that someone out there in advertising land thinks that 61-year-old skank is sexy? And sold the concept to a multi-million dollar industry that is, essentially, selling sexual fantasy? Because, let's be honest, Vicky's Secret makes stuff that barely fits and doesn't last. Bob Dylan? Sexual fantasy? To someone other than me?

Frightening. Very, very frightening. Disturbing, even."

That entry received no comments, and the fact that Bob was selling his music to Victoria's Secret passed unremarked upon in most of the popular press. There was barely a ripple about it on the various authorized and unauthorized fan sites.

What a difference a year and a face makes. The current incarnation of this campaign, which shows the ragged old face of my idol, garnered 17,400 hits when I Googled it just now.

Many people have referenced the apocryphal interview of 1965 wherein Mr. Dylan is alleged to have said that he would be willing to sell out for ladies' undergarments. But has anyone actually pulled that interview and quote out of the ether? No. (Google count for that reference? A mere 137 hits, none of which is specific as to where the interview was, or with whom.)

I am not a Dylanologist, but I am a fan. By that, I mean that I have watched and listened and appreciated him over the span of 40 years as his musical interests have changed, as he has donned and discarded his masks (both figurative and literal).

When Ms. Veciana-Suarez decries this latest Dylan event, and says she wants Dylan to be Dylan, what she is really asking of the man who defines mercurial is to be trapped in the amber of time: specifically a time thirty years ago. Has she listened to Time Out of Mind, or Love and Theft? There are no protest songs on either of those, his two most recent albums. There is knowledge of mortality; there is lovesickness and sorrow; there is some fierce rock-a-billy piano work.

So Dylan is selling lingerie? So what. With so much going on in this world, so much, in fact that Ms. Veciana-Suarez would like to see Dylan sing about, why doesn?t she pen a protest of those things, and quit staring into the belly-button lint of throw-away culture?