Leah Land

Team Queen is reviewed in The Feminist Review

Remember Van Halen’s 1984 video for their adolescent anthem “Hot for Teacher?” Well, Team Queen is its queer, feminist doppelganger. Okay, that’s giving David Lee Roth too much credit because the post-punk, emo, Brooklyn-based Triple Creme are way cooler than Diamond Dave could ever hope to be, even if he did have a cameo on an episode of The Sopranos.

- Heather Brown
The Feminist Review

Excerpts from the full review are posted below:

Team Queen is Leah Meyerhoff’s second music video. I haven’t seen the first one, but the fact that it’s called Eternal Flame kind of says it all. Aside from music videos, this New York University film student has an impressive resume of films -narrative and documentary - and has won numerous awards at festivals, such as the San Francisco Frameline, North by North East, and Chicago Reeling Festival. In fact, her short film Twitch is currently airing on IFC.

Though it is a music video for the eponymous Triple Creme song, Team Queen is really much more. Fans of New York burlesque performers Murray Hill, Julie Atlas Muz, Tigger and Scotty the Blue Bunny will be happy to know that this motley crew helps comprise the crowded, colorful, gyrating mob that seems to fill every inch of one’s home TV screen. Having seen Julie Atlas Muz and Tigger perform at Washington, D.C.’s Palace of Wonders in October 2006, I can verify that the pasties and spandex-adorned Muz and Tigger we see in Team Queen are quite tame in comparison to the lip-synching labia and pierced perineum that one is likely to get a shocking glimpse of at a live show. (You can guess who has what, right?) Most of the burlesque folk don’t appear until the band breaks out into an impressive “Team Queen”/ “Ironman” medley, but it’s worth the wait.

The video begins with a scared, mousy brunette’s entrance into a packed high school classroom that is bursting at the seams with hyperbolized, homoerotic stereotypes of jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, popular chicks, stoners and everyone else that would probably have found Ferris Bueller a “righteous dude.” (Don’t pretend you don’t get the reference) Of course, Murray Hill is the teacher. Triple Creme’s Christina sits at a desk and sings to the camera, looking rather greased-lighting. We continue to follow our heroine’s journey through the throngs of brightly and retro-outfitted cliques in the halls of Team Queen High. Each member of the student body beckons to her, and we just know that at any minute, she’d going to transform from the army green t-shirt and blue jeans into Miss Team Queen. She does not disappoint, and her burlesque court helps strip to her final transformation, and voila! The moral: high school is really just one big queer carnival. Either you buy tickets and watch, or you dive naked into the cotton candy.