seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)
[personal profile] seekingferret
Nobody's commented yet, but let me say what struck me in listening to the songs in the playlist I posted last post, and what connected them for me.

I called the playlist a Poe's Law Playlist, after the internet culture observation, as summarized by wikipedia: "Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers or viewers as a sincere expression of the parodied views."

These four songs are all about dating culture and pickup culture, two sung by men and two sung by women, that in different ways evoke Poe's Law uncertainty for me.

"Gorgeous", off Taylor Swift's newest album, features a woman singing to her crush about her inability to win him. The genius article takes it seriously- analyzing the clues in the lyrics to identify if Swift is talking about current boyfriend Joe Alwyn, or previous boyfriends like Tom Hiddleston or Calvin Harris. This interpretation says that these are her genuine feelings about the guy, that this song is confessional in the classic Swiftian vein. Yet this seems impossible to credit. The lyrics of the song strike me as obviously satirical. The opening line is "You should take it as a compliment/ That I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk" The chorus is "You're so gorgeous/ I can't say anything to your face/ 'Cause look at your face/ And I'm so furious/ At you for making me feel this way". This is straightforwardly MRA/PUA language, being used by Taylor Swift! There is nothing genuine in this song, you're supposed to laugh at the narrator and her negging, and to think about how we excuse men who use language like this. Or maybe not?

Owl City's "Deer in the Headlights" confronts the inability of men to grapple with the consequences of using this kind of language: "Met a girl in the parking lot/ And all I did was say, "Hello"/ Her pepper spray made it rather hard/ For me to walk her home/But I guess that's the way it goes." Then the chorus goes "Tell me again, was it love at first sight/ When I walked by and you caught my eye?/ Didn't you know love could shine this bright?/ Well, smile because you're a deer in the headlights" Here, genius identifies the song as satire. Genius agrees that we're supposed to think of the narrator as a creep and a predator, who walks up to random strangers in a parking lot and then tries to act innocent. What's different about this song that genius recognizes the satire this time? Have we reached the point where culture has described male nice guy creepiness enough, in the wake of #metoo, that a male satire does not raise Poe's Law issues, but the female satire still is interpreted within the misogynistic norms of patriarchal ideas about romance?

Norah Jones and El Madmo present a revenge fantasy against this sort of PUA in "GGW". She responds individually to each of his oh-so-innocent nice guy lines: "I'm not lonely/ I just wanted a drink/ You don't need to understand." As the creep escalates, Jones escalates back "I guess you want to lose your eye//Cuz I got nails/ You will bleed." Jones posits that the appropriate response to negging and gaslighting is to make the implicit manipulation explicit and reveal the patheticness of the pickup artist.

And Shael Riley's "Less than Three" is the one that most flummoxes me with its ambiguity. Its chorus is super adorable geek love- "Together we are two/ Two is less than three/ I <3 you." At first that was what drew me to the song, but I became uncomfortable as I listened to the lyrics closer, which move from "Would you go out with me" to an unexpected and inappropriate "Would you have sex with me?" It's unclear to me if this song is apologetics for an awkward geek who acts creepily because of his nervousness, or if it's critique of a more intentional creep who eventually screws up and blurts out his true designs on the girl, which have nothing at all to do with less than three. It skates that Poe's Law line so hard it's impossible for me to know how to understand it.

And there's a deeper question all these songs make me ask, about the purpose of music in these circumstances. Why produce a song like "Deer in the Headlights", with its hooky, sunny pop disguising a sharp critique of its narrator? If you're going to critique pickup culture, should it be danceable? Who wants to dance to a song with lyrics like this? Are these songs Le Tigre-style sugar pilling? Or are they just broken love songs in a society full of broken love songs?

(no subject)

Date: 2018-04-17 07:56 pm (UTC)
cahn: (Default)
From: [personal profile] cahn
Ooh, I'll play! sorry, was busy mainlining Verdi my brain is broken (I do find it easier to respond to something that's already been said, so now that you've started...)

...people think "Gorgeous" is about a real person?? Um. Wow. And even more than that, even if it was about a real person it seriously doesn't make sense to think it's about one of her boyfriends! But! It was interesting to hear it from the perspective of a woman, because it does in fact come off differently to me, in a way that makes it more susceptible to Poe's Law -- I'm trying to understand my interior response -- maybe women aren't "supposed" to act like that, so it doesn't compute quite when one does? That is to say, on my first listen I took it relatively "straight" (I definitely didn't think it was about a real person, but I took it as a straightforward narration of the narrator's state of mind), and then I read the lyrics apart from the music and the MRA/PUA language became much more clear. (Though it's also true that between being slightly spectrum-y and marinating in science/engineering-world, I do have a problem identifying MRA/PUA language in real time. In retrospect, it's been used on me, and it just flew right over my head. Lucky me, I guess?)

I will confess my favorite of those four is "Deer in the Headlights." It's just so over-the-top and so bouncy! This one, I claim, is far more over-the-top than "Gorgeous" even without the gender difference, because it doesn't rely on the social knowledge of that kind of language, but rather describes over-the-top actions: if you're getting pepper spray used on you... you're probably doing something wrong, and I bet that my Asperger's 8-year-old could tell you that, though she might be confused about exactly what was going on -- but she probably wouldn't understand the point of "Gorgeous" at all, regardless of gender.

Re your last point: I think there's a clear point to making it so bouncy and danceable -- it's the incongruity that is actually important, I think; knowing that a happy-sounding beat can disguise monsters. (See also Jonathan Coulton and e.g. "SkullCrusher Mountain.")

I don't understand "Less Than Three" (are the lyrics available anywhere?) but I agree it's got a disturbing edge to it. I think it's supposed to be disturbing, but I don't actually have a good handle on what is going on. (Why less than three? Does the narrator want a threesome? I don't get that.)

(no subject)

Date: 2018-04-17 08:54 pm (UTC)
cahn: (Default)
From: [personal profile] cahn
Oh, ha. OK. (...I have used that shape I don't know how many times and it never occurred to me to actually sound it out...)

(no subject)

Date: 2018-04-18 12:23 am (UTC)
scintilla72: AS logo (Default)
From: [personal profile] scintilla72
I may eventually try to wrap my brain around all of these unfamiliar terms, but for starters... who is this unnamed lowercase-G genius? A reference to genius.com?

(no subject)

Date: 2018-04-19 04:46 am (UTC)
bookherd: (Default)
From: [personal profile] bookherd
I downloaded and started to listen to these and then got distracted troubleshooting my laptop's audio, which is badly distorted through all output options (internal/external speakers + headphones), which is really cramping my music-listening style. But I like that you did this, and would probably play along with similar discussions in future assuming I can get my device to cooperate.

(no subject)

Date: 2018-04-20 05:32 pm (UTC)
calledtovienna: (Default)
From: [personal profile] calledtovienna
>> There is nothing genuine in this song, you're supposed to laugh at the narrator and her negging, and to think about how we excuse men who use language like this. Or maybe not?

Yeah, it is weird, right? That's a problem with a lot of Taylor Swift songs. Like, for example, I kinda love "Blank Space", but if you reverse the genders of the people involved, it becomes hella creepy! The video (and, to be fair, the lyrics) sort of definitely make it an over-the-top parody, but there are plenty of other whacky examples.

To some degree, I think it might be the opposite -- we are more likely to excuse women using language like this than men. There is a weird discussion here about how we treat women and power, and the reason why we excuse that is because we assume that women don't have any power. A pretty blonde awkwardly hitting on you is (theoretically) a lot less scary than a large dude awkwardly hitting on you? On the other hand, it is not like there is a shortage of well-regarded male performers singing about their failed relationships, using women as props, etc.

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