hollovv replied to your post: sijemesouviensbien replied to your post:…

Its the same with like, immortal technique even - the way the posturing performs a certain action informs the listener of intent and content and really has something to say rather than just being a restatement of cultural norms

I’m going to reply to this really fast, so this may not be too organized, but after just posting something on Radiohead, I thought of this point, but I am about to go to bed, so, yeah, tired, but whateves.

A song that really comes to mind that exists really in the space between ‘really saying something’ and merely being a ‘restatement of cultural norms’ is Radiohead/Burial/Four Tet’s collaboration “Ego” (you can listen to it here if you like). The song’s hella groovy, and one of the best from any of those three I think, and the lyrics and absolutely beautiful as far as I’m concerned:

I feel light upon my feet
from the way you look at me
you open up the universe
yeah I bet you get this all the time

I crumble when you touch my wings
but that’s okay, ‘cause I’m laughing
I’m tougher than you think
yeah I bet you get this all the time

The problem is the basic scenario of the song: guys hitting on some girl (presumably), and the girl constantly denying them for whatever reason, with the constantly repeating line of ‘yeah, I bet you get that all the time’. It seems to, on a really blunt level of interpretation, oscillate between shaming this woman for her promiscuous ways, and characterize her as cold for not latching on to any of the men’s advances. Further, it seems to take this really problematic ‘misandrist’ view that there’s just a bunch of good old guys, lost in their own ways, but good people at heart, being turned down by the ‘modern empowered woman’.

Yeah, those interpretations are a bit stretched - no doubt - but the groundwork’s definitely all there. If there isn’t some sort of sexist grounding to this song, no matter how minor, then I really don’t know what to make of the lyrics, because then they just turn into theme-less rambling. But I still think it’s a great song, regardless (even if it’s not your cup of tea genre-wise, I think you could appreciate it on some level). So it seems to exist in that space between the two poles you were talking about. And if it’s not this song, I can probably think of a hundred others that do similar actions with their lyrics, and if the goal is just not to listen to blatantly misogynistic music, but accept music that has sexist tones, but that isn’t colored by it (as Evylyn [is that how you spell your name? I think this is the first time I’ve written it out, and I’m sorry if I got it wrong] and you seem to be advocating), then I have no idea what to do with that middle ground sort of music.

Sorry that this is so long, but it’s a topic of media criticism that’s been bumping around my skull recently, and I have no clear cut answer to it anyway (I actually like both of your answers, I just don’t know how to work with them yet), so I’m just trying to engage this dialogue a bit more in the hopes of figuring something out here.

Thanks for the time already spent on this, and time yet to be spent.

1. autochthones liked this
2. autochthones said: Im a little more lighthearted than most -annoying you can’t escape living in our society so you just gotta be aware and not take things too seriously sometimes. Im sure most SJ people would flay me alive for that but OH WELL
3. sterwood posted this