An amalgamation in a situation between “The Magic School Bus” and Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” Melanie Martinez’s movie musical “K-12” brings to the fire various motives about authoritarianism, individualism, peer pressure, patriarchy, body image, toxic relationships and the positive uses anger than any 24-year-old singer, songwriter-screenwriter-director could rationally be expected to have.
Making it’s digital debut this Friday after a worldwide screening the night before at theaters including the AMC Stony Brook 17, the film, based on a surreal school, explodes with so many ideas that make the relationship dramas of a Katy Perry or a Selena Gomez song seem more like a just-get-over-it types, you know?
With something that has the potential to break the internet, just to cite an example, one African-American student who doesn’t rise during the Pledge of Allegiance gets hauled away by the security thugs.
“The villains are these people at the very top of the mechanism who are abusing their power,” Martinez told. “They’re symbolic of people who are in power right now, in this Administration.”
Martinez seemingly had backed into the idea of shooting a movie. Her initial idea was for her second album, the newly released “K-12,” to be viewed as whole rather than as a mere collection of singles. That’s not however unique.
Many bands have been doing storytelling concept albums since the 1960s likes of The Who’s rock opera “Tommy.” But in the modern days of the music single’s domination, it’s an ideal more related and associated with the old guard rather than with a Multitalented Pixie Dream Girl.
Martinez dons the role of Cry-Baby, the titular personality of her previous album, who with her homie Angelita (Emma Harvey) navigates and rebels.
From next month onwards, it begins a strictly international tour that is being played at the Manhattan Center Hammerstein Ballroom on Oct. 29. And, almost constantly, there are songs to be written.