so i read this article and had a lot of feelings about it and turned on “Your Favorite Weapon” and wrote some stuff. it sort of made me feel like Livejournal was a thing again… <!— /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:”“; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} —>
This article is…interesting. While I do agree that this genre/these bands/these songs are misogynistic (which isn’t surprising, since almost all Western music is in a sense, or at least inescapably produced from a gender-biased society; and for what it’s worth, I still think popular hip-hop/rap/pop music tends to be the most blatantly and offensively misogynistic or gender-limiting/discriminating), I’ve never felt particularly alienated from this music because of my sex. For whatever reason, it didn’t bother me that these singers/lyricists/musicians were male in the same way that it has always, and still does, bothered/bothers me that every single film/television character I have ever related to, with the exception of 65% of Juno’s identity and some non-human others, has been male. Perhaps my particular gender identity (whatever the hell I mean by that) makes it possible to do what other females cannot, but as referenced in this post I made about The Shins music, with emo music of the likes mentioned in this article (Brand New and the Pixies are two of my all-time favorite bands, so they are the biggest players in this puzzle for me), I have always been able to identify with the perspective of the male singer, and sometimes simultaneously with the description of the female “object” of which he is belting. For me, I think it is the mark of a good message (or perhaps it’s just my own good interpretation…cue overzealous sense of self-worth) when a listener can relate to both the perspective of the storyteller and the perspective/situation/actions of the person in his story. In “Last Chance to Lose Your Keys” by Brand New, for instance, Jesse Lacey sings about a girl leading him on—feigning interest, not following through, leaving him “home alone on a Saturday night…(likely moping and typing wildly in his Livejournal about the pity-party he’s throwing).” While I can recognize that I could potentially treat someone the way Lacey is describing, and perhaps have, I always related most to his perspective, being frustrated and pitiful about someone not wanting to date me—the whole “situation (being) incredibly typical” and I should have “seen it all along.” Perhaps I just don’t think my female perspective (in these particular instances) is some special thing entirely different from the POVs of the shaggy-haired bros whose song lyrics I cryptically quoted in all away messages from 2002-2007. (Obviously, the female perspective on the whole is different from that of the male because of our society’s preconceived notions of each and the resultant stereotypes and struggles…blah blah blah…but when it comes to describing a human situation and its associated emotions, I don’t see why my perspective can’t be shared with people of the opposite sex.) The only thing that has bothered me, and still does, is that it isn’t explicitly acknowledged or made obvious (or even remotely known, maybe) that I, too, as a female (I hate revealing my sex on the Internet…so pretend I didn’t say that and continue envisioning me as an androgynous bot, please) share this exact same perspective/story. I don’t really know how that could be fixed though, since having a female sing a similar song may change the perspective and make it entirely non-relatable for me (personally).
Obviously, I can’t be speaking for everyone. I think my particular view of gender/sex/society and how I identify with all of it is vastly different from that of most females, and although I was, and still am, attracted to the physical embodiment of emo/indie/alt/hipster (there are too many versions!) boys, I never found myself idolizing them based on the song content, wanting a boy to write me some millennial sonnet in the form of a Dashboard Confessional mockery, or anything of that sort. If anything, I just wanted to meet these “boys” (or, as I like to call them, “people”) and commiserate and tell them to stop thinking all girls suck/stop dating dumb girls. The only thing I fell in adoration with from the “emo” movement was the scrawny artsy boy image and the associated notion of “creativity” that went with it (and honestly, probably the sensitive/passive boy qualities that were a welcomed balance to the emotionless/aggressive girl image that I embodied).
Also, although there is a huge population of girls who did and still do listen to “emo” and these other alternative bands (I feel uncomfortable referring to all of the bands mentioned in that article as “emo”…it’s grossly inaccurate), female listenership in this genre still pales in comparison to its male counterpart. (Chicken/egg situation alert: does the disparity exist because girls can’t relate to the music and aren’t attracted to it, or are they not into the particular style for reasons unrelated to its supposedly gendered content?) Further also, although the mentioned Brand New song is supposedly referring to date-rape, one mustn’t forget “Sic Transit Gloria,” a song birthed from the same album as this Rufie-jam, which tells of the male singer being taken advantage of, so-to-speak, by a sex-driven female. Not that this content is necessarily putting the female in a positive light, but it is putting her in an aggressive situation and flipping the table on the forced-sexual-activity scenario (though I suppose we can’t really compare date-rape to the non-drugged situation of “Gloria”).
This article also fails to address both the similarly-lyricized (and perhaps more “wrongly” liked by females) misogynistic content of later millennial indie music, as well as the all-female bands—Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, Tegan and Sara—and female-fronted bands—Tilly and the Wall, Rilo Kiley, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Metric—that existed in these times. This latter point is fairly self-evident (although these lady songbirds were not as popular as many of their male-driven indie counterparts (with perhaps the exception of Rilo Kiley), these female-dominated bands did (do) exist, and so the music scene wasn’t as bereft of female perspective as the authors seem to have indicated), but with the former, I think it’s more common to find female listenership in the bread-and-butter indie crowd (see the Pineapple Express reference to Seth Rogan’s high school girlfriend going to college and “discovering” The Shins), and these bands tend to present, if not misogynistic content, at least content dominated by the supposed “male perspective.” James Mercer of The Shins creates the “indie-ideal” in “Those to Come” with the image of his “modern girl…making tea in (her) underwear,” and is talking about some female fancy of his in “Girl on the Wing” with “could have been so good-natured if I’d relented and you’d insisted,” and it goes on (throughout the current-triad of albums). As mentioned in that blog post I referenced earlier, I’ve never had a problem relating to both the male narrator and female subject in The Shins discography, in just the same way I am certain Jesse Lacey was using my Xanga entries to fuel the subject matter of his albums. But Mercer’s lyrics are just as dominated by the male-perspective as are the bands who had t-shirts for sale in Hot Topic, and the same could be said for Vampire Weekend, the Decemberists, and whatever other popular-enough indie band I could reference to get the point across (the verdict’s still out on the Arcade Fire…there’s too much for me to deconstruct when it comes to their body of work).
Alas; I just don’t really relate, I guess. To me, these guys were always singing about experiences I could relate to. Yes, it’s annoying that this relatable material is “packaged” in a way that doesn’t make it obvious that they are describing my female perspective in conjunction with the obvious description of their male dilemma, but I don’t think I would have fared better relating to angry female rock. Bottom Line: you’re just jealous ‘cause we’re young and in love. “We’re” being guys and girls, the general young populous, or, as POD would put it, the youth of a nation.
(FWIW, I always skipped “Me Vs. Maradona Vs. Elvis because it was slow and boring, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with what he’s writing about. Females shouldn’t be wanting that song to happen to them, or to date the guy in that song based on the great qualities he is mentioning, or SHOCKING—to flip the switch and do the same thing to a guy/girl of their liking, but it’s fine for such a situation to be expressed. Is that really the song that has girls wanting to marry Jesse Lacey? If anything I feel like he is being brutally honest about something people do in certain “romantic” contexts that could illuminate a harsh reality for girls and guys alike. I probably have too much faith in human interpretation, I guess, but I always thought the song that made him a hit with the ladies was that one about knowing what you look like without make-up on, you know? But I guess that’s also misogynistic because it talks about mascara.)
